The Life To My Soul
by Haldiriell
Summary: Part 2 of "Even The Stars Burn". Khan and his people, working to build a new life for themselves on a planet they're secretly colonizing, are interrupted when the crew of the USS Enterprise discover them. Tensions between Khan and Kirk are renewed, fueled by the connection both men have to Khan's wife. But there is a greater threat than jealousy lurking in the dark . . .
1. Prologue

**-Prologue-**

_The Beta Quadrant_

"Captain's log, stardate 2261.01. The crew of the _Enterprise_ observed the new year on New Vulcan, with Commander Spock's father and the individual we've dubbed Spock Prime. It's still very strange to me that there are two of him. Spock and Lieutenant Uhura are in unusually high spirits since the visit. I wonder if they're hiding something. At any rate, they're not fighting anymore and I'm relieved."

Jim Kirk, captain of the _USS Enterprise_, paused his dictation and leaned back in the chair behind his desk. His quarters were quiet; it was the middle of the night aboard the ship, and apart from the skeleton crew that manned the bridge during the night, everyone was asleep.

He liked this time of night; it gave him space to think without the constant demands of commanding the vessel he loved so much. He loved being captain, and he loved what they were doing. But sometimes, he needed a break from it.

It had been almost two years since he'd died saving the _Enterprise_ and its crew. He'd been revived through the blood of one Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically engineered superhuman with homicidal tendencies. Dying had changed him. So had Khan's blood, though he hadn't confessed that to anyone.

They weren't huge changes, just subtle ones no one noticed but him. His eyesight was sharper. His reflexes just a little faster, his body just a little stronger. He didn't need as much sleep as he had before, and his mind, well . . . Kirk had always been something of a genius. Christopher Pike had once asked him, the night he'd talked him into joining Starfleet six years ago, if he liked being the only genius-level repeat offender in Iowa. So he'd always been smart.

But now, he was _smarter_.

It scared him a little, enough that he had spent the last two years wondering if he was going to change in other ways. So far, so good, and he was still the Jim Kirk he always had been. Well, not entirely. Death did change one's outlook. He wasn't as brash, cocky, and gung-ho as he'd been before.

"Current plans are to swing past the remains of Vulcan on the way back out into the unknown. It's mostly for Spock's benefit-"

The communicator on his desk beeped. He paused the recording, held in a sigh as he pressed its answer button. "Kirk."

"Captain," the voice of his first officer said, "Lieutenant Uhura has informed me that we are receiving a high-priority transmission from Earth, addressed to you."

Kirk frowned. "I'll take it here in my quarters. You might as well come over, so I don't have to repeat anything."

"Certainly, Captain."

In moments, his door chimed. Kirk said, "Come."

It slid open and admitted Spock. Obviously, the Vulcan hadn't been sleeping, either. Kirk motioned him over to the desk even as he touched the computer screen with a finger, signalling it to give him the transmission.

It was text, and Kirk skimmed it. Then he stopped, went back and read it more slowly.

Then he swore.

"Captain?"

Kirk rubbed a hand over his face, noting he needed to shave. "That was from Starfleet. Actually, it was from a Vice Admiral Brody. Don't know who they are, but they said it has to do with Section 31. It seems that Khan and his crew have been . . . abducted."

Spock wasn't often bewildered, but his brows drew together ever-so-slightly at this. "An interesting choice of words, Captain."

"Yeah. Admiral Brody also says that Lieutenant Commander Anthea Mackintosh is missing."

The Vulcan tipped his head. "You think that she had something to do with this?"

The captain snorted. "Oh, I _know_ that Anthea _Harrison_ had _everything_ to do with it."

"I was under the impression she believed her husband to be deceased. How did she know he wasn't?"

"She's a spy, Spock. I'm pretty sure she knew exactly what she was after when she came to see us in San Francisco." And he, stupidly, had told her just about everything he knew. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Spock leaned over and read the missive from Earth. "How long ago did they discover this?" he asked, even though he could read it for himself.

"Apparently, she altered the records and they had to go through all their top-secret storage facilities one by one. She 'vanished' a little over a month ago with her kid. I'm guessing she's spent the last two years working on this."

"She _is_ the wife of a criminal mastermind," Spock remarked.

Kirk scowled at the screen. "Just what we need, Khan and his people loose in the galaxy. This is just great."

"I presume that Starfleet would like us to locate them."

"Doesn't say," Kirk said.

"What are we going to do, Captain?"

Jim Kirk heaved a sigh. "I have no clue."


	2. Chapter One

**-Chapter One-**

_CX-431 Alpha_  
_2261.15_

The settlement was small, but busy. Bare-chested men worked in the hot summer sun to construct somewhat primitive buildings, joined by a few women in sleeveless shirts. Others of both genders milled about, doing things that construction required of them. A select few worked with more modern equipment, preparing food or processing build materials. In short, the place was loud and somewhat chaotic.

"NOLAN!"

By rights, no one should have been able to hear the shout over the din, but everyone instantly stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to the woman searching the construction site frantically.

Otto, the foreman of the project, shouted, "Keep eyes wide, everyone, he is out again!"

"He" was fifteen-month-old Nolan Harrison, son of Anthea Harrison and her husband, Khan Noonien Singh. The currently-only child of the settlement's leader, Nolan was a precocious handful, and everyone had very quickly learned to keep an eye out for him.

Anthea hadn't meant to let him get away, but the little boy-who could walk far too well for his tender age-had a tendency to disappear if she took her eyes off him for more than a few seconds.

"Nolan!" she called again.

"Over here!"

With relief, Anthea turned towards the voice of her sister-in-law, Kati. The other woman had Nolan in her arms. Though the child struggled, there was no way he was going to escape his aunt's iron-banded grasp.

"Thank you," his mother said with relief, as she took him from Kati. "I'm going to have to put him on a leash!"

"Good luck with that. He'll just find a way to escape again." Kati reached out and ruffled the toddler's black hair.

With Nolan located, Otto gave the order to resume work. Anthea propped her son against her hip and carried him back towards "home", presently the interior of a starship named _Reliance_.

Her husband was in the medbay-turned-laboratory with Yves, one of the only two colonists with medical training. Khan didn't look up as she entered, merely asked, "Did you find him?"

"Kati did." She leaned on one of the medbay's two beds and sighed. "I've got him locked in our cabin for the moment. But as soon as he's tall enough, he's going to be able to trigger that door."

Yves glance over at her. He was a tall, lean man with blonde hair and chocolate-brown eyes. "Hopefully, he will have better judgement by the time he is tall enough, non?"

"I certainly hope so." Anthea moved over to where Khan peered through a microscope. She laid a hand on his shoulder, rubbing lightly. "What are you working on?"

"I am studying Kati's latest blood sample."

"Is she still rejecting the transfusions?"

He sighed and sat back, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Yes, and I'm not sure why. We're working on modifying the formula for the serum Dr. McCoy developed, using Kati's own blood as a base, to see if we can find a reason for it."

"I'm sorry it's not working."

His sister was the only one of the "family" that was actually related to Khan by blood, aside from his toddler son. When he and his people had been exiled from Earth in the twentieth century, she had, with her brother, spent centuries asleep. He had access to much more advanced technology, had even discovered that his own blood cured nearly anything.

Anything, it seemed, but whatever flaw in Kati's genetic engineering had given her epilepsy. Her blood was, so far, the only one that rejected Khan's blood outright. They'd tested everyone in the settlement, and in every sample, Khan's blood overwhelmed and "fixed" the DNA. Except Kati's. He'd given her a transfusion weeks before, and it had sent her into convulsions that had nearly killed her. And now, while his people laboured to build houses on their new home planet, he spent his days in the lab, toiling to find out _why_.

"Have you thought to try Nolan's blood?" Anthea asked. "I'm loathe to offer him up as a guinea pig-"

"-Or dead tribble," her husband muttered.

"Pardon?"

"Nothing." He turned in his chair and looked at her. "I hadn't thought of that. His DNA is might be sufficiently different from mine . . ."

"Shall I fetch him?"

"If you wouldn't mind?"

Anthea went to retrieve their son. As she walked down the corridor, she mused on the last six weeks. For the most part, Khan's crew accepted her as his wife. They didn't treat her with the same deference they did him-anything he ordered or requested was followed immediately and without question-but no one had outright protested the presence of a "normal" human in their midst.

She knew some didn't like her. Rodriguez, for example, but a large part of his dislike of her stemmed from a dislike of women in general. He was the only one who had made a fuss over her presence, but he'd very quickly learned not to say anything in front of their leader.

Others, however, just gave off a vibe. She hoped that in time, they would accept her more. She didn't fear any of them, she just wanted to not receive the side-long looks and whispered remarks. Considering all she'd done for them, one would think they'd give her a little more respect, and not only keep silent out of deference to Khan.

Anthea scooped Nolan out of his playpen and hugged him close. There were no words for how much she adored her little boy. Having Khan back, after nearly two years apart, was wonderful, but Nolan really made her life complete. Becoming a mother, even unintentionally, had been the best thing to happen to her.

"Hi, sweetie," she said to him. "Let's go see Daddy for a bit."

Nolan gave her a big, gap-toothed grin. "Dada!"

Her son had a pretty advanced vocabulary, but what else could be expected of the son of Khan Noonien Singh? Still, Nolan *was* fifteen-months-old, and had trouble with a few of his letters, mostly with pronouncing his Rs. He was bright and intelligent, and usually a very happy, cheerful little boy.

Life on their colony wasn't easy, but for her husband and her son, she would do _anything_.

* * *

Back at the medbay, she carried Nolan in. She set him on one of the two beds and retrieved an extractor unit. "How much do you need?" she asked Khan.

"One unit should be sufficient."

Khan rose from his chair and came over, watching as she used the tool to take a sample of their son's blood. They were designed to be painless; still, it was difficult for both of them to do it.

He wasn't generally an openly demonstrative man, except when it came to his small family. Anthea made him _feel_ more than he could recall in all his years, and Nolan . . . Nolan's very existence made the heart he'd once locked away swell with pride.

He had taken on Starfleet by himself for the sake of his crew. For his son, he would take on the universe singlehandedly if he had to.

Glancing at his wife as she handed him the vial of blood, he knew that he would never have to do it alone. He gently ruffled Nolan's hair, taking the vial from Anthea with his other hand.

He didn't savour remembering those days after he'd fled Starfleet, when he'd thought Alexander Marcus had killed his crew, when he'd feared that his capture on Qo'noS had meant Marcus might go after Anthea, if he hadn't already. He'd hoped she would be safe with her family in Scotland while he sought vengeance for his crew. He hadn't been able to kill Marcus in time to keep the admiral from seeking her out. It was a minor miracle the arrogant old man hadn't done anything to his wife, but at the time, sitting in a brig aboard the _USS Enterprise_, he'd had no way of knowing if she lived or not and every reason to assume the worst.

His crew lived, despite Marcus's attempts to the contrary. And not only had his beautiful wife given birth alone while he was locked in a cryotube-unaware of his son's very existence-she had stolen him and his people right from under Starfleet's nose, and brought them here.

Khan owed her so very much for that, and an immeasurable amount for their son. Knowing he was a father had shifted his world view ever so slightly. He'd thought, the day he'd crashed the _USS Vengeance_ into the city of San Francisco, that he had lost it all. But now he knew better. He had _everything_.

But he said none of this, at least not in front of his crew.

Resuming his seat, he set about his latest test. But he paused in preparing a slide to watch as his wife left, taking his little boy with her.

There was, he thought, very little that could bring him down now.


	3. Chapter Two

**-Chapter Two-**

They had yet to select a name for their new planet. The Federation had given it a generic name for its own records, but it was outside Federation space and had been uninhabited save for local wildlife. Anthea had chosen it carefully. It wasn't too far from inhabited systems to completely isolate them, but staying out of the Federation's way was important. With everything Starfleet had done to them-and what, admittedly, Khan had done to Starfleet-a wide gulf was the best choice.

Life on the small planet felt, at least to Anthea, somewhat like the summer camp her parents had sent her to when she was thirteen, the one where she'd met her long-time friend, Lindy Williams. They'd "roughed it", meaning they'd slept in tents and learned to make fires and spot poison ivy. But it hadn't been "real". And now, Lindy was back on Earth, married with a baby on the way, likely still oblivious to what Anthea had done and the real identity of the man she'd married.

Here, there was no escaping the primitive conditions to go back to the modern world. Granted, it wasn't as far removed for Khan's people, as they'd spent two and a half centuries in an artificial sleep. They'd come from a war-torn time, one with only rudimentary space flight. The seventy-two men and women who had survived their long, long journey on the SS Botany Bay, out of the original ninety, were remarkably adaptive to their situation. They'd devoured all the technical manuals Anthea had brought from Earth, had learned the use of the phasers and the plasma cutters, the PADDs and communicators, with remarkable speed.

Yves in particular was thrilled with the technological advances. Even though Anthea saw their little medbay as woefully underequipped, the Frenchman had informed her that it was beyond anything available on Earth when he'd been a practising physician. That was a scary thought to the young mother.

These people were all scarily intelligent and strong. They'd taken to the modern equipment in just a few days, and now seemed to wield the tools as if they'd grown up using them. They'd figured out which planets and animals were safe to eat, and which weren't. And they had, so far, raised ten cabins to live in. At the moment, they split themselves between the finished structures and the temporary shelters. Seventy-two were a lot of people to shelter. Yves slept aboard the _Reliance_, as Anthea and Nolan did, but the rest were fine with their current accomodations, as far as she could tell.

Kati flagged Anthea down as she left the ship, Nolan in tow. "Anthea! Look what I made for you."

She held out a belt that had been modified to add nylon webbing, turning it into a big leash. "For Nolan."

Anthea had to laugh. "Thank you," she said to her sister-in-law. "I love it."

The other woman, due to her affliction, was in charge of most domestic matters around the colony. Heaven knew Anthea didn't have much of a talent for it. She'd brought the makings and equipment for sewing clothing, but she was pretty much only good at sewing squares together. Even though she was technically a soldier, Kati had an interest in it, and thus was in charge of overseeing the small group that handled such things.

Kati took Nolan from Anthea and fastened the belt around the toddler's waist. Two nylon straps went over his little shoulders and attached at the front, and the length of webbing from the back was long enough that Anthea could loop it around her wrist.

"This is going to be very useful," Anthea told Kati. "Maybe now I can keep him from running around the construction areas."

"We do not mind him running around _here_, but he really seems to like the power tools."

"No, he just likes going where I tell him not to."

Nolan plopped his small, diaper-padded butt on the ground and tugged at the harness. "Mama! No!"

His mother rolled her eyes. "He only listens to Khan these days. Which isn't that different from the adults around here."

Kati shook her head. "The women like you. The men are . . ."

"Annoyed that a normal human woman saved their arses?"

"Essentially, yes. Give them time. They know how much you have done, but it is . . . not how we operated before."

Anthea glanced down at her son, as she said, "I'm aware of your previous operations. Nolan! Don't eat that!"

She bent and took the bug from her son's grubby fist. "I know you've a brain in there, sweetheart. Do try to use it. If it wiggles, it doesn't go in your mouth."

Nolan frowned, reaching for the insect as Anthea tossed it away. Kati watched him with a somewhat wistful expression on her narrow face.

"I know that look," Anthea said. "That's the 'I want a baby' look."

Kati hadn't mastered the blank expression her brother was so good at. ". . . I do. Someday. But with this-" She tapped her temple. "-I do not want to risk passing that on. Ironic, is it not? Sister to the great Khan, the most flawed."

"He's working on it," Anthea told her. "He is. It worries him that he can't figure out why his blood hasn't fixed it."

"Why my blood rejects his, even though half of it is shared? Yes. I have a theory about it, one I have not discussed with him. We share half our blood, yes, but what if I am . . . flawed because I am a failed attempt at a female version of Khan?"

"How so? You mean, your gender modified from a clone or something?"

"Not precisely. What if Mother knew what she had created with Khan, and attempted to reproduce rather than exactly clone?"

Anthea blinked grey eyes at her sister-in-law. "I'm still not following."

"What if he is not only my brother, but my father? Not in a taboo way, merely his genes. I have spoken with Yves about their experiments. Perhaps he cannot fix me because my blood already carries his genes and it does not know what to do?"

"That . . . is an interesting theory, one I suggest you bring up with him as soon as possible."

* * *

It probably should have bothered Anthea more that she was married to a man who was responsible-directly or indirectly-for the deaths of thousands. She knew, though, that Khan had not intended for the people in San Francisco to die. The ship he had been piloting had been crashing anyway, and he had attempted to direct it elsewhere. Granted, "elsewhere" had been Starfleet Headquarters, but he headn't meant for it to land in the bay and then plow into the city. There was only so much he _could_ do to control the ship, which had weighed hundreds of thousands of tons. With its guidance systems malfunctioning, and its thrusters dead, there had been no stopping the _USS Vengeance_ once it was sucked in by Earth's gravity.

Once he'd been able to stop deceiving her, Khan had opened up about his indentured servitude to Starfleet, or as he'd put it, his slavery to Admiral Marcus. He had admitted that he'd started a relationship with her largely because he was lonely, he was attracted to her, and she was useful. He'd fallen in love with her along the way, and realised that dragged her into his mess had been selfish and dangerous.

Then, all at once, his careful plans had been shot to hell and he'd had to run. Marcus had come after him, had threatened Anthea, and he'd felt he had no alternative but to take out the head of Starfleet.

He'd done so, but it had separated him from his wife, and from his child.

She'd been angry with him for so long, but now that they were reunited, and she knew what had happened in the time he'd been gone, she found she couldn't hold on to that emotion, not when she had so many other things to cling to.

Lying with Khan in their cabin, she watched him in silence, comparing the man before her with the man she'd thought she'd married. John Harrison had never been real. He'd been created by Alexander Marcus to hide who Khan really was. He hadn't been counting on his pet engineer to fall in love with anyone, and neither had Khan.

"Sometimes," she told him now, "I still wonder what was _you_ and what was this persona you made up. Sometimes it's difficult to reconcile you with John Harrison."

"The things I told you in private, just between the two of us, was always me," he murmured. "As much of me as I could give you at the time. You've always been so open with me, and there was only so much I could say without endangering you. But I tried to tell you the truth, when I could. And if I could not, I tried to make it as close to the truth as I could manage."

"I still feel sometimes as if I don't know you."

"You have no idea how much I regret that," he replied softly. "Before I really knew you, it was easy to lie. But as I came to love you, my sweet Thea, it was such a burden. I wanted so much to tell you what Marcus was doing to me, why I had to keep you secret and to myself. And at the time, if I had told you who I really was, how I had come to be here and what I had done in my former life, would you have believed me? Would you have _trusted_ me?"

Anthea shrugged. "It's impossible to say now. But I've trusted you always, even when common sense and the whole of Starfleet said not to."

"I am aware," Khan whispered. "And I have no idea how I can ever repay that love and trust."

Their bed wasn't very large, barely big enough for the two of them to squeeze on, sometimes with Nolan wiggling his little body between them. Their son had taken immediately to Khan, adoring him with every fibre of his small being.

This was one of those nights. Anthea lay between Khan and the wall, on her side. Her husband faced her, and Nolan sprawled on his back, limbs loose in sleep.

She picked up one of Nolan's small hands, letting his fingers curve around hers. "I've been thinking," she said slowly.

"About what?"

Anthea ran the pad of her thumb over the velvety-soft skin on the back of Nolan's chubby hand. "I want at least one more child," she said quietly. "I don't want him to grow up alone as I did."

"Having a sibling is good, yes," Khan murmured. "I would like another child, as well."

"My thought was, he's over a year old now. If we wait much longer, he'll technically be too old to play with a sibling, because I don't want him to possibly hurt a brother or sister, not knowing his own strength and not being old enough to know he has to be careful. If he's inherited your full strength or not, he's still really strong for a baby."

Her husband nodded. "I understand completely."

He reached over and caught a lock of her hair between his fingers. "The last time we had this discussion, we decided it wasn't time."

"And then I ended up pregnant within weeks," she reminded him.

"Yes. I was hesitant to bring a child into that mess. It happened anyway and I missed it."

Anthea turned her head a little, into his hand, as he laid it against her cheek. "What do you think? Should we try?"

One corner of his mouth lifted. "I have no objections. I want to see you heavy with my child, to be there for his or her birth."

Between them, Nolan grunted a little and rolled to his side, reaching out in sleep to grasp a handful of Khan's shirt in his small fist. His mother hugged him to her, pressing her mouth against the top of his head.

"I adore him," she whispered. "But I do want another one."

"Then let us have another one."

"Chances are good I might already be pregnant," she said. "What with there being no birth control around here."

"Is that why you brought this up now?"

"Not really. It was just something I was thinking about today."

Khan sat up, carefully lifting Nolan in his arms. "Let me put Nolan to bed, and we will . . . discuss this further."


	4. Chapter Three

_A/N: Stupid rating limit, making me cut the sex scenes . . ._

* * *

**-Chapter Three-**

The lead Kati had made for Nolan proved very useful. Anthea could slip it over a chair leg and her son couldn't run away. He wasn't pleased by this new development, though, and cried for a good twenty minutes when Mummy introduced her latest trick.

"He really doesn't like it," she observed to her sister-in-law. "I've never seen him get this upset, aside from when he first started teething."

"Khan is not one for being tied up, either," Kati remarked.

"Oh, I don't know about tha-" Realising what she'd been saying, Anthea snapped her mouth closed. "Um."

Kati let out a surprised laugh. "I do not need details!"

"You won't get them," Anthea promised.

"It is good, though, you and my brother. _Before_, he never had anyone like you. No one to truly care for him as you do. He had . . . mistresses, but they were never more than toys to him. I admit, I was not pleased at first, when I learned you were his wife. But you are good for him. You help him be . . . human."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

Nolan had, by this time, finally stopped crying. He sprawled on his back on the grass, in the shade of the tree his mother and aunt had sheltered beneath, and hiccuped.

"Nolan, too," Kati continued. "I know he does not let the others see, but we all know he adores his son."

"I think it's a bit silly, but I also know he's used to keeping things close to the chest. And I know why that became ingrained. But he doesn't need to do it here. It's not as if he has a reputation to uphold."

"No," Kati said, "we would all follow him into the depths of Hell. Even if he asked us to do it while wearing pink tutus."

Anthea grinned at the mental image of her intense, stoic husband in a tutu. "I'd love to see that."

"So would I."

The two women grinned at each other.

"We've decided to have another baby," Anthea confessed. "One he'll be here for."

"I think that is an excellent idea!"

"I'm a little scared, I'll admit. Last time, I had the best doctors there for the birth."

"Oh, Yves is very good!" Kati assured her. "Though I do not know how many babies he has delivered."

Anthea arched a brow at her sister-in-law's effusive support of the doctor. She wondered if Kati knew how her face lit up when she said Yves's name.

Nolan crawled over to his mother and dragged himself into her lap. Curling against her, he jammed a thumb in his mouth and grabbed a fistful of her blouse. "Mama," he mumbled sleepily.

"Looks like it's naptime," Anthea said. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go put him down for a spell."

* * *

With Nolan napping, Anthea sat at the tiny desk in their cabin. She'd begun documenting life at the colony in a series of letters addressed to her mother, which she'd never send. She missed her parents a great deal, though she would always choose Khan when it came down to it.

_Mum,_

_We've been on the colony seven weeks now. Today is day 50._  
_We've built a number of cabins for our people, and more are_  
_under construction. Khan has selected s beautiful site for _  
_our own home, beneath a very tall, sheltering tree at the _  
_edge of our little village. For the present, we're still _  
_calling the ship home, though._

_Khan is still working on trying to help his sister. It _  
_worries him that he can't figure out what is wrong. He's not_  
_a man used to failure, and this, especially with his only _  
_true sibling, has him very stressed. I do what I can to _  
_assist, even if it's just give him comfort._

_Nolan is growing fast. I wish you could see him! Even though_  
_he's only fifteen-months-old, he's fairly mastered walking,_  
_and has begun running, though he still has a tendency to _  
_fall when he does this. He still speaks only in short _  
_sentences, but his vocabulary is expanding by leaps and _  
_bounds. Khan assures me his rapid development is normal for_  
_their kind. Our son has graduated from nappies now, which _  
_was the only hitch so far. He did not want to potty train. I _  
_prevailed in the end, however. Khan is relieved; he does not,_  
_at present, have to change any diapers._

_We've decided to try for another child. While we have no _  
_preference on gender, I admit that I would love to have a _  
_little girl. There are women here, but there is entirely too_  
_much testosterone on this colony. We have nine more men than_  
_women, Khan not included, and if we want a successful colony,_  
_we'll need to find the men wives. Save for Otto and Chin, _  
_who are a same-sex union, though Chin has confessed he would_  
_like to find the couple a surrogate by which to have a child_  
_of their own._

_My conflicts with Rodriguez continue. I'm not asking him to_  
_obey my every order, simply afford me some respect. I did, _  
_after all, rescue his frozen arse from Starfleet. Still, he _  
_behaves as if the women are lesser, me least of all given _  
_that I'm "normal" and not augmented like the rest of them. _  
_He treats me with a little deference when Khan is around, _  
_but when my husband isn't present, Rodriguez behaves as if_  
_I am not, either. I may bring this up with Khan, but I _  
_don't want to cause trouble._

She leaned back and studied the words she'd written. In his little bed, Nolan stirred and rolled over, pushing his small bottom into the air as he pulled his knees up. Anthea watched for a moment, smiling faintly.

_I cannot help but wonder how things are on Earth. I wonder _  
_daily how Lindy is doing, but I can't speak to her or let her_  
_know where I am. She always had a little more blind loyalty _  
_to Starfleet than I did. But I wonder how she's doing with _  
_her baby on the way. She'll be due soon, and I won't be _  
_there for her. She probably hates me now, but then, she _  
_never did understand. She thought I was mad for loving_  
_Khan. Perhaps I am, a little._

The cabin door slid open and Khan entered. Anthea quickly saved her entry and closed down the computer. She wasn't hiding anything from him, it was more out of courtesy. He looked tired, and for someone with his stamina and bearing, that was saying something.

"You're working too hard," she told him as she rose from the terminal. "Did you get _any_ sleep last night after I went to bed?"

"No," he murmured. "I couldn't sleep. I feel I slept too long."

"Khan, darling, two years in a cryotube doesn't count as proper sleep." She took his arm and pulled him to the bed. "You need a break."

He pried off his boots, ran a hand through his dark hair. "I'm responsible for my people, Thea. How can I ensure this colony's success if I cannot fix this one problem?"

"Maybe _Kati_ isn't supposed to be fixed. I was never really one for believing in destiny, but . . ."

"What changed that?" he asked, as she pulled him down beside her.

"You did," she said simply. "By rights, you should have died, what, two hundred years ago? We would never have met. But you were in cryosleep for that time, and Marcus found you, and assigned me to work with you. I'm sure it wasn't his intention that we fall in love, get married, and have a son, but if not for such an odd string of events, we wouldn't be here, now, with our little boy."

Khan stretched out on his back and closed his eyes. "It does have a certain predestined feel to it, doesn't it?"

She brushed a stray lock of hair off his forehead. He didn't wear it gelled back as much as he had before, and she liked the look of it now, different as it was.

"I'm sure you'll solve this problem, in time. But you can't work yourself into exhaustion, sweetheart. Not like you did before."

He reached up, caught her hand toying with his hair, and drew it down to play with the ruby ring he'd given her when he'd proposed. "You're right. I was always so tired then. If I had been a little more alert, perhaps . . . No matter now. We're all safe here, aren't we?"

"As safe as we _can_ be," she murmured. "You should take a cue from Nolan, and take a nap."

Khan rolled to his side, tugged her against him. "Or, since he's dead to the world right now . . ."

"Mm. I like your thinking."

* * *

He ended up taking more than a nap, sleeping the rest of the afternoon and well into the night. The problem with his being a "superhuman" was that sometimes, he thought he didn't have limits. Anthea knew better, and she wasn't surprised that he'd crashed so hard.

Khan had a tendency to obsess over things, fixate on them until they were all-consuming and he _had_ to deal with it. She understood the drive he'd had to save his people, now that she knew that's what he'd been doing two years before. But he was doing the same thing with Kati, now, and she couldn't figure out, except to distract him through sex, how to get him to slow down.

At least, she mused, he was using his focus for good. She knew he and the others had once attempted to "purify" the earth. It was mind-boggling to her that her husband was capable of such a thing. Isolation from his people, his relationship with her, and undoubtedly his adoration for his son, had changed his perspective and his priorities. Still, knowing that the man who slept beside her had once ruled a quarter of Earth? It was difficult to grasp.

He made a distressed sound and jerked in his sleep, brow furrowed. The nightmares, too, were nothing new to her. He'd had them for as long as she'd shared a bed with him.

Anthea smoothed her thumb over his brow, murmuring, "Khan. It's only a dream, darling."

He woke with a gasp, blue eyes flying wide. Khan blinked rapidly, then focused on her face. "Anthea."

"Another nightmare?" she whispered.

Instead of answering, he looked around the room. "How long have I been asleep?"

She consulted the clock. "Oh, a good twelve hours, almost. You didn't even wake when Nolan threw his bear and pitched an absolute fit over it."

He sat up, and she grabbed his arm, pulling him back down. "But I need-"

"To sleep," she insisted. "Everyone else has gone to bed. There's nothing you need to do at this very instant."

Seeing she wasn't going to give in, Khan sighed and closed his eyes. "Fine."

Anthea wrapped an arm around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder. "You were dreaming. Do you remember any of it?"

"Fire," he murmured. "Fire, and my mother's voice, screaming. I've never had that one before. I barely remember her voice as it is. I do not know how I knew it was her. I tried to reach her, but I couldn't. It was so hot . . ."

He drifted back into sleep, and Anthea wondered.


	5. Chapter Four

**-Chapter Four-**

A few days passed before Anthea stiffened her resolve and approached Kati.

"Do you remember much about your mother's death?"

Kati paused in pinning the sleeve of a shirt in place. "To be honest, I do not remember her at all. I was only a little older than Nolan when she died. I know that Khan has better memories, but he, too, does not remember her much. I do know that he took her death very hard."

"What do you _know_ about what happened?"

Her sister-in-law put down the shirt and leaned back in her chair. "There was an explosion at the lab where she worked. Khan thinks she was working to fix my epilepsy, as he is, but we do not know for sure. The explosion caused a fire, one that no one could get through to even attempt to save her."

Anthea nodded, attention half-drawn to Nolan where he lay in his playpen in the shade, gnawing on a cracker. "And where was Khan during this?"

Kati frowned. "I do not know, actually. Why do you ask?"

"Just something he said a few nights ago. Got me to thinking. It's nothing, really."

* * *

Khan may have been the leader, and regarded by his men as supreme commander and emperor-which made Anthea snort to herself whenever one of the men addressed him that way, regardless of his past status as such or not-but he looked after his people first and foremost. He waited 'til they all had cabins built, proper shelters rather than flimsy tents, to start work on their own home.

Anthea brought him lunch while he and Otto took a break from digging a shallow foundation. With Nolan on her knee, they ate in companionable silence, broken only by Nolan attempting to steal some of his mother's lunch.

"I've been thinking about something you said," she told her husband, when he took Nolan from her.

"Oh?"

"When you had that nightmare about your mother? You said that you were trying to reach her and couldn't, because it was too hot."

He frowned. "I do not remember much about the dream."

"What if . . . it was a memory? Is it possible you were there that day?"

Khan turned those intense eyes her way and regarded her in bemusement. "I have no recollection of it."

"Everything you've told me about what happened has been a . . . historical, third-person account. What you were told growing up. Except that dream. If she was experimenting using your DNA, it would make sense for you to have been there. They didn't have DNA replicators then, did they? Everything had to be with a large sample."

"Nearly everything," he said with a nod. "It was so primitive compared to today. I . . . I'm not sure, to be perfectly honest. I have no memory of that day, at all. I remember only . . . being told she was dead."

He froze so suddenly that Nolan reached up and patted his face, saying, "Dada?"

"What is it?" his wife asked.

"I just remembered something. When they told me she was gone, I was in a white room, in a white bed. I always thought it was one of the rooms at the . . . centre where Kati and I were raised after her death, but now that I think about it, it wasn't. It was a hospital. Why was I in a hospital?"

"Maybe you were there. Perhaps you were injured in the fire?"

His expression was suddenly troubled. "Perhaps. I will need to think about this more."

Anthea reached over and rubbed his shoulder. "If you need to talk it out, you know I'm up for it."

* * *

"This is a lot hotter than England," Anthea complained. "When is it going to be fall?"

"We chose a warmer area," Khan reminded her. "I'm not familiar with the seasons here, and given our latitude, I wouldn't expect cooler weather for a while."

She groaned. "It's giving me a headache. I think I'm going indoors, where it's cool."

He lifted a brow. "It isn't *that* hot."

"It's hot if I say it's hot!" she retorted. "Ugh. Go do shirtless, manly things."

"Wouldn't you rather watch me do those shirtless, manly things?" he asked with mild amusement.

"Maybe later. I'm going to see if Yves has anything for this headache."

She was almost to the ship when it hit her. She hadn't been nauseated in so long, it was a complete surprise to find herself stopping on the path, stomach clenching, to fight a wave of the unpleasant sensation.

In fact, she hadn't been nauseated since she'd had morning sickness with Nolan . . .

Trying to keep her excitement tamped down, Anthea hurried aboard the ship. It had been easier, she recalled, to test for pregnancy back on Earth. Even in the twenty-third century, it didn't get much simpler than peeing on a stick that said "pregnant" or "not pregnant".

She didn't have one of those, hadn't thought about it. She knew it was because, subconsciously, she hadn't wanted to think about the logistics of having a baby on a distant colony, far from Earth. She really should have taken that into account.

"Yves," she ventured, as she entered the medbay. "How would I go about setting some of this equipment for a specific test?"

The doctor tilted his head, eyeing her. "What kind of test, Madame Khan?"

"Please, Anthea is more than adequate." It bothered her more than a little to know that some of Khan's crew took the meaning of his name, ruler, literally and used it as a title. "I need a pregnancy test."

His pale blonde brows arched up. "_Oui_? Does Khan know?"

"He knows we're trying. He doesn't know I suspect. I'd . . . like to surprise him a little."

"Ahh. I see." He smiled and gestured for her to come over to his station. "We can test by blood, just a little prick-ha ha, still funny even now!-of the finger-"

"Ow!"

Yves caught a drop of her blood from the tip of her finger in a little container. "Yes, well, not as delicate as the extractor, but it does not take much. Perhaps, one day we will have the ability to sense it with a scanner, but it is not this day."

He took the blood sample and popped it into one of his machines, humming a tune she didn't recognise under his breath. "Ahh! And here we are! You see, it is like those crude tests but without the indignity, checking the hormone levels in blood instead of . . . the urine."

"Which is appreciated," she said dryly. "What does it say, Yves?"

He turned the screen her way. "Your suspicions are correct, madame. Indeed, _vous êtes enceinte_!"

Well, that hadn't taken them long at all, had it?

* * *

She found Khan working with Otto and a man named Joachim-a blonde, obnoxious man she'd taken an instant dislike to, though he was oblivious-on what was to be their home. It was larger than the others, with several bedrooms plotted out. They had the foundation down now-made of large, flat river stones-and the support beams up, nailing them into place with little effort.

She watched them work for several minutes, grateful she'd brought hundreds of thousands of nails. She'd had no idea how many it would take, or how many structures they'd need, so she'd planned generously on nearly everything.

Otto was the first to notice her. "Kaiserin!" he exclaimed. "It is unsafe!"

"I'm well outside the reach of any beams," she assured him. "May I have a moment with my husband?"

"Certainly!" Otto said, and dragged a protesting Joachim away.

Khan set his hammer down on the work table and wiped sweat from his brow. His black hair fell in his eyes and he impatiently swept it back. He was shirtless, as she'd jokingly suggested, and glistened in the afternoon sun. Anthea never got tired of looking at him, especially like this.

"What did you need?" he asked. He picked up one of the reusable bottles they'd brought, currently filled with water, and took a drink.

"Oh, I just wanted to see how things were going . . ." She stepped to the "doorway". "Is it safe to come in?"

"As long as you do not step into the hole where we've laid the cellar," he said. "This is the living area, and over here will be the kitchen. The cellar is beneath it. This, er, room will be my workspace, and here, a room for you for . . . whatever you'll need one for."

"And I'm guessing this large space will be our bedroom?"

He nodded. "Big enough for the bed you brought from Earth."

"I couldn't possibly leave _that_, now, could I?" she asked with a grin. "I have very fond memories of that bed."

Khan smirked. "As do I. Now, this will be, I think, Nolan's room, though he's too small to truly appreciate having his own space."

"And . . . two other rooms? Is one a nursery?"

His blue eyes went from the rudimentary floorplan to his wife's face. "If we need one. Do we need one?"

She couldn't have kept a secret from him if her life had depended on it. Anthea bit her lip, grinned, and nodded.

Khan dropped the bottle and hauled her into his arms to kiss her passionately. She laughed against his mouth, hugging him tightly. He never kissed her in public, not like this. It was nice.

He backed her against the nearest support beam. Anthea hadn't done anything about her earlier headache, but she forgot it with his body pressing against hers like this. If their new house had had walls, she probably would have encouraged him to take her on the floor.

"A child," he said, when he put her down. "_Another_ child."

"Yes. Let's not tell anyone just yet, but yes." She didn't want to share their joy with anyone at the moment, wanted to hoard her happiness. "Just a little while. I want it just between us, only for a little while."

"Mm. I'm good at keeping secrets. This one, though, I may have a bit of trouble with."

They stood in the framework of their home and held each other, and Anthea reflected that life really couldn't get much better than they had things right then.

Still, in the back of her mind, she wondered when the other shoe would fall.


	6. Chapter Five

**-Chapter Five-**

A happy Khan was a very pleasant Khan. As the heart of the community, even though only the two of them and Yves knew about their baby, Khan's good attitude quickly spread to everyone. Everyone save Rodriguez.

This time, it was apparent enough that Khan finally picked up on the man's animosity.

"What is his problem?" he asked Anthea, as they prepared for bed.

"He doesn't like me," she told him. "I wasn't going to say anything, but he doesn't."

"Why would he not?"

She shook her head and sighed. "Khan, not everyone sees me the way you do. I haven't brought it up because I don't want to cause trouble, but he's not the only one who doesn't care for me. He's just the most obvious about it. I talked about it with Kati. They think I'm . . . not good enough, or something."

Her husband frowned. "That is completely ridiculous."

"Actually, I can kind of see where they're coming from. I'm not an Augment. I'm a normal, flawed, weak human woman in their eyes. And Rodriguez especially is angry that he apparently feels he . . . _owes_ me. I don't see it that way, but some of them apparently resent that I rescued you lot all on my own."

Khan snorted in disgust. "It is not only that. Silly as I think that reasoning is-you are _not_ weak in the slightest-there may be another cause."

She arched a dark brow. "And what would that be?"

He actually looked uncomfortable. "Back during the wars . . . Rodriguez is not originally one of my people. Most are, for varying reasons, but Rodriguez was late to the party, so to speak. I had a brief . . . interlude with his sister, and she was killed in the war. I think he believes that I would have married Telema, and he would have been elevated in status by it."

His wife was skeptical. "So he resents me because not only did you not marry his sister, who then died, but you settled for an ordinary woman?"

He nodded.

"How long was this . . . relationship?"

"Six months. The longest I had before you."

Anthea made a derisive sound. "Oh, please. If you were required to marry anyone you shagged for at least six months, I would have married Elworth Kennedy straight out of secondary school. And that would have been a disaster."

"And who is Elworth Kennedy?" There was a thread of jealousy in Khan's voice; she doubted any but she would have noticed.

Anthea smirked. She wasn't jealous of his past, especially given they were all long dead. But he, who had no reason to worry, was jealous. It was kind of cute. "Idiot I dated in school. I was sixteen, and he was my first."

Khan caught her around the waist. "And if you met this Kennedy now . . .?"

"There is _no one_ but you, my love," she breathed, pulse racing as he pulled her against him. "I wasn't even that invested _then_. I only shagged him because I was curious and he had a fast car. Have I mentioned I was a little shallow at sixteen?"

Her husband laughed and pressed his lips to the side of her neck. "Telema was pretty, but that was her only appeal to me," he told her. "She never held my affections. I was . . . different before you, Anthea. I never loved the way I love you."

She reached up, caught her fingers in his hair, and twisted to kiss him. Khan's big hands were hot through the thin silk of her nightdress, flattened against her back to hold her against him.

"Khan," she breathed against his lips.

"Mama!" Nolan yelped from his playpen. "Ma ma ma ma ma!"

"Dammit," Khan muttered. "That's it. Starting now, he's getting his own room."

She laughed. "I was just thinking that myself. Tell you what. I'm going to take myself off to the loo for a moment. Why don't you move his crib into the next cabin over?"

"Good idea."

When Anthea emerged from the bathroom, she padded on bare feet next door, where she found Khan tucking Nolan into bed. She loved these moments, when her war machine husband showed his softer side.

"There we go, Noisy Cricket," he murmured to the baby. "Off to sleep, now."

Anthea came up behind him and looped her arms around his waist. "'Noisy Cricket'?"

"Oh. It's a . . ." Khan gave a small laugh and looked sheepish. "A film that came out in the 1990s, about a government agency that deals with aliens attempting to invade Earth, called 'Men In Black'. I only had the chance to see it once, but one of the main characters, Agent J, has this ridiculously small gun that packs an enormous wallop. It's called a Noisy Cricket."

She looked down at their sleepy son. "I see the resemblance."

Khan took her hand. "Let's star-gaze. It's a clear sky tonight."

"Khan, I'm in my nightdress."

"No one will notice," he assured her. "And if they do, they'll look away."

She hesitated, then grabbed a blanket and one of the "baby monitor" communicators Khan had rigged up. "Fine."

Outside, near their mostly-built cabin, Khan spread the blanket out and they lay back to look up at the stars. Since there was no light polution, the sky was brilliant with glowing pricks of white light, and a multicoloured swath of gases from a nearby nebula.

"I remember," he told her softly, "the rooftop patio in London, where we tried to stargaze. But London was too bright."

"Mm. Our first night together, as I recall."

"It was, yes. Back . . . home, in the twentieth century, I loved to stargaze. I had all of the constellations memorised. These stars . . . I couldn't begin to tell you what they are."

"Pretty is what they are," she said. "Beyond that, who cares? Oh!"

She pointed excitedly as a shooting star went by. Logically, she knew it was just some sort of space debris, burning up in the atmosphere or skimming along its surface, but she didn't care.

"I haven't seen one of those in so long."

Khan wasn't quite as impressed, but then, he knew what it was like to be in something crashing through the atmosphere, with no shields, only a thick layer of metal between you and a very hot death, so it had lost some of its charm. "I want the others to be as happy as we are, but short of ordering them to 'pair off and make babies', I'm at a loss as to how."

Anthea laughed at his phrasing. "I think Yves and Kati might be interested in each other."

Khan folded his hands behind his head, looking up at the sky. "They have been for some time, but neither has the guts to say anything."

"I do know she's worried about her condition, about passing it on. Have you made _any_ progress on that?"

"Some, I think, but it could very well be that she was designed to reject my DNA." He rolled to his side and ran a finger down his wife's arm. "We were created to be the start of a superior race, but . . . What tends to happen when bloodlines are regarded as 'pure' and not to be sullied by the inferior?"

Anthea wrinkled her nose. "Oh. Ew."

"I am still not certain my mother really regarded us as children more than experiments. Given how she created us, and who she worked with, the thought would definitely have crossed her mind. If she worked in a failsafe to prevent inbreeding, it would explain why that transfusion of my blood nearly killed her."

"That's . . . both devious and evil, and brilliant."

Khan pressed his forehead to hers and sighed. "However, it leaves me with figuring out which part of my DNA repairs errors, and which of hers rejects it, and figure out a way to remove that and splice mine in. And doing so with the limited equipment we have . . ."

"I got what I could. I'm sorry it isn't more."

"I know you did, my dear. And Nolan's blood does show less of a reaction, so I am hoping that eventually . . ."

Anthea combed her fingers through his hair. "Did you look into her theory about the other thing?"

Khan made a frustrated noise. "I did, and she is correct. Our mother used my DNA, blended with her own. My thought is that is the cause of her defect and the source by which Mother built in the failsafe. Humans do not reproduce asexually or through selfing."

"You realise I have very little actual idea what you're saying? I just love listening to you talk."

Khan huffed a laugh. "You're much smarter than you give yourself credit for, Thea."

He ran his hand over her stomach, laying it gently against her belly. "I have so much to thank you for, my love. You saved my people, and have given me a true family. I know I can be . . . distant at times, but you know that I adore you, yes?"

"Of course I do." She stroked her fingers over the back of his hand. "There was a time when I wasn't sure, but now, I have no doubt."

"I am sorry I gave you that doubt." Khan kissed her forehead, then her mouth. "If I could do it over, differently, I would."

"What's done is done," Anthea told him. "There's no point in worrying about it now."

"Mm. No. But I have seen enough that . . . even if I can, in this moment, think that nothing can touch us, I still worry."

"Don't," she pleaded softly. "Don't waste time on worry. Let's just enjoy this time, however long it ends up being."

Khan rolled to cover her, cupping her face in his hands. "Whether it is a day, or a century," he promised.

Then he kissed her, and both missed the meteor shower that lit the sky above them.


	7. Chapter Six

**-Chapter Six-**

Armed with the things Khan had told her about Rodriguez, she sought the man out the next morning, where he worked on tanning hides culled from local wildlife. He was on the shorter side, only a few centimetres taller than she, with a wide, stocky build and long, black hair tailed at the nape of his neck.

"Rodriguez," she said, as she approached.

He looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun with a hand, and sighed when he saw her. "What do you want?"

"Khan tells me your first name is Miguel. Would it be alright if I called you Miguel?"

"No."

She smiled. "Alright, that's fine. Rodriguez, I am aware that you do not like me."

"Senora Khan is a smart one," he said dryly.

Her smile turned into a nasty grin. "Khan knows, Rodriguez. Right now he's tolerating it and letting you adjust. But let me tell you something. _I_ am his wife, the mother of his son and of any future children. Do you know what that means?"

His dark eyes narrowed. "Why do you not enlighten me, senora?"

"It means that I spent _two years_ hunting down where Starfleet had stored you lot, and it means that the _only_ reason I rescued your sorry, ungrateful arse is because he likes you. It means that I have the patience and determination to make your life a living _hell_ if you continue to treat me as subhuman. Khan may be your leader, but it's really _me_ you should be worried about, Rodriguez, because I will not hesitate to remove you if it becomes necessary."

Rodriguez laughed. "You talk big, Senora Khan, but I do not believe you have the . . . guts."

"No?" Anthea picked up one of his hide-scraping knives, one out of a box of random hunting-and-gathering tools she'd thrown together back on Earth. She rolled the handle between her fingers. "Let me tell you something. There was a doctor back on Earth. Her name was Roxy Coleman. Brilliant geneticist, just at the start of her career. She was one of my staff, while I worked at Starfleet Headquarters, trying to find Khan and all of you. She discovered some things, after I had her look into something. She swore to me she'd never tell."

"What has this to do with me, senora?"

"Do you know why I'm speaking of Roxy in the past tense, Rodriguez?"

He shook his head.

"Because I killed her. I _liked_ her, and I killed her because she knew too much." She slammed the knife down, burying the point in the log he was using as a work surface. "What do you think I would do to _you_, since I don't like you?"

Anthea turned and walked away, leaving him with that thought going through his head.

Khan stood in the doorway of their mostly-built cabin, not far away. "Did you really kill this Doctor Coleman?" he asked.

"Her career," Anthea told him. "Which, to a doctor, is very much the same thing."

He laughed.

"Not going to chew me out for threatening one of your men?"

"Hardly. I've tried to make them accept you, but we are a very proud race, bred to be that way. Much as I hate to say it, my dear, many of them are going to make you earn your place. Rodriguez was a good start."

She sighed. "I'm having a baby, Khan, I don't have time for this shite."

"I know. But world domination can't be achieved overnight. Believe me, I speak from experience."

". . . I don't know what to say to that."

* * *

By Earth's calendar, it should have been autumn already, but CX-431 Alpha had a slightly longer revolution, and summer dragged. The heat was really getting to Anthea, and she spent most days on the ship, where there was air conditioning.

Once word got around that she'd stood up to Rodriguez, some of those who had been leery of her came around, viewing her as worthy of their leader at last. Those who had always supported her didn't see why it was such a problem, Khan marrying a normal, but very capable, woman.

"Khanopolis!"

Khan gave Joachim a gimlet eye. "I am not _that_ egotistical, Joachim."

"You used to be proud of who you are!" the other man said.

"I still am. I have merely learned to temper it with restraint. You would do well to do the same."

Chastened, Joachim ducked his head. The men sat around one of the work tables, taking a break from construction, and talk had turned to what they were going to name their new home.

Otto laughed and slapped the younger man on the back. "We are looking to name a world, Joachim, not feed Kaiser's ego!"

Khan briefly lifted a corner of his mouth in a wan smirk. He _was_ different now. Not in any huge way, but his time with Starfleet, his time with Anthea, had taught him what years as dictator of the largest empire on Earth could not: power wasn't everything, and arrogance could cost him. There was a difference between knowing his abilities, knowing he had been engineered to be _better_, and assuming that it could automatically get him anything he wanted.

Being bested by a Vulcan had taught him that.

"I want a name to last," he said finally. "We may be faster, smarter, stronger, but we do not live forever. I wish to give our home a name that our children can carry when we are gone."

Otto nodded. "Why not ask Kaiserin her opinion, Khan? She has good taste."

"She said she does not care, as long as it isn't silly or difficult to pronounce," Khan said.

Chin, silent until now, laughed. "She did the hard work," he pointed out. "We just build, and finish what she started. She does not need to worry about trivia now."

Especially not, Khan thought to himself, now that she was expecting. He smiled to himself, thinking of their coming child.

Kati wandered over, with a plate of food for Khan. "Taking a break?"

"And trying to name this place," her brother said. "Thank you, Kati."

Kati pushed her long, dark braid over her shoulder. "How about . . . Sitara?"

"What does that mean?" Joachim asked.

"It's Hindi," Khan told him. "It means 'planet' or 'world'. 'Tara' also means 'star'."

"I like it," Chin said. "It sounds nice, and is to the point."

"You speak Hindi?" Joachim asked.

Otto reached over and smacked him on the back of the head. "His name is Khan Noonien Singh, fool. What do you think he speaks, Swahili?"

"I _do_ speak some Swahili," Khan said. "Also French, Afrikaans, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, Russian, German, Vulcan, Romulan, and Klingon, to name a few. Not necessarily with any complete fluency."

Kati patted her brother's head. "You are such a show-off. Oh, I almost forgot. Anthea said to tell you that she wishes to speak with you, when you have some time."

He immediately stood up. "Did she say what she needed?"

"It was nothing urgent," Kati assured him.

"Still, I had better see what she wants."

As he left, Otto remarked, "That woman has the great Khan wrapped around her finger."

"I would not mind being in his place," Joachim said. Then, "Ow!"

* * *

Khan paused with his hand near the panel to lower the _Reliance_'s ramp when he heard Anthea's laughter coming from the direction of the lake. Turning on one heel, he walked the length of the ship, finding wife and son playing in the shallow water under the _Reliance_'s nose, shaded from the hot sun.

Nolan splashed happily in the water, shrieking with squeals and laughter. The little boy sat in his mother's lap, slapping his hands against the water's surface, giggling at the ripples he made. Anthea wore a bathing suit, her brown hair knotted loosely at the nape of her neck. As far as he could tell, the baby was naked.

Khan loved moments such as these, the sight of his child so _happy_ making his heart swell. To think he'd nearly missed all this, would have missed it if Anthea hadn't sacrifice everything she'd worked for to save him.

He walked across the warm, sandy shore. Nolan saw him approaching and yelled, "Dada!"

Anthea turned, giving him a big smile. "Come play with us, Daddy," she said. "I'm teaching Nolan how to swim."

Khan shrugged and kicked off his boots, then peeled off his shirt. He rolled up his pant-legs and waded into the water, to where his little family sat.

Nolan immediately splashed him with a small spray of water and giggled madly.

Narrowing his eyes at his son, Khan growled, "You think you're getting away with that, do you?"

He caught Nolan under his little arms and pulled him through the water, and the child laughed like a loon. Khan found himself grinning as he skimmed Nolan's small body over the surface of the water.

Anthea never tired of seeing Khan interacting with their son. When she'd been pregnant with him, she hadn't known where her husband had disappeared to, or his side of the events that had taken him from her. She'd faced a future in which she'd raise her child alone.

Words couldn't describe how happy she was now. It had been an adjustment, calling him Khan instead of John, but now it felt as if she'd always called him that. And watching him play with Nolan in the water, truly relaxed for what was probably the first time in _years_, she could almost believe they'd never been apart.

"I think you're his favourite person in the universe," she remarked to her husband. "Before I woke you up, he was all about Mummy, but now he worships you."

Khan glanced over with a smile. He held Nolan loosely, so the child could float a little and paddle his arms and kick his small legs. "I'm still new and interesting to him."

She shook her head. "No. He adores you. I wondered if he'd know who you are, since you weren't there in the beginning, but he definitely knows you're his father. If it was just that you're someone new, he'd be like this with everyone, but he's not."

Nolan got impatient with the talk and no swimming, and he flailed his little arms. "Play, Dada! Swim!"

Khan arched a brow. "How big is his vocabulary now?"

"I lost count a while back. He picks up a new one every day, I swear."

"Hmm."

They spent a while teaching Nolan how to float by himself. He almost had it mastered by the time Anthea decided their wrinkly skin needed to dry out. They got out of the water, and Khan carried Nolan on his shoulders, the little boy's small hands on his head for balance.

Anthea wrapped a towel around herself and picked up her husband's discarded clothes, since he had Nolan and couldn't retrieve them. As she straightened, she noticed that Rodriguez stood not far away, glaring at them.

"He might be a problem," she told her husband. "It's gotten worse, not better."

"I will speak with him," Khan said softly. "Truthfully, if he weren't an Augment, I would have left him on Earth back in 1997."

She made a noncommittal noise and keyed open the _Reliance_'s ramp. As he followed her aboard, Khan noticed she'd put a hand to her belly.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"Fine. Just thinking. I have no real preference on a gender, but I'd love to have a little girl."

He put Nolan down, even though the child was still naked. "I believe I would, as well. Perhaps, if we did . . . we could name her Sarina."

"After your mother?" Anthea caught Nolan, amidst his protests of "No, Mama!" and carried him to his dressing table. "I'd like that."

Khan slid his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. "Speaking of names, Kati suggested a name for this world, and I have decided to adopt it."

"What did you choose?"

"Sitara. Hindi for 'planet'. About as original as Earth, but more elegant."

Anthea twined her fingers through his, where they rested on the slight swell of her stomach. She'd never regained a flat belly after Nolan's birth, so she was "showing" earlier with this child.

"I like it," she told him. "It's a good name for our home."


	8. Chapter Seven

**-Chapter Seven-**

_The Beta Quadrant_  
_2261.85_

Aboard the _USS Enterprise_, life went on pretty much as it had for the last year. Hopping from one system to the next, looking for life signs, seeing if any present civilisations were space-faring yet. Kirk was adamant that they obey the Prime Directive this time around. The last time he'd ignored it, a good friend of his had died. It hadn't been directly related, but it was close enough in his mind that he didn't want to risk pissing off any sadistic diety that might be listening in.

At present, they were near the Brinthini system, where Doctor Leonard McCoy, known affectionately to Kirk as Bones, was trying his hardest to convince the captain they needed to visit on shore leave.

"Jim, if I spend more than two more days on this ship, I'm going to lose it."

Kirk held up a hand. "Alright, alright! There's one more system between us and Brinthini. It's supposed to be uninhabited."

"Yeah? Then why are we going?"

The captain shrugged. "The civilsation vanished, Starfleet has no idea why. They last surveyed . . . ten years ago? They want us to swing by, see if we note any changes that might explain things. I think it's a waste of time, but it should be fast and easy."

"Yeah, that's what I thought about my ex," Bones said under his breath. "Fine. What's this planet called, anyway?"

Kirk poked at the display on his captain's chair. "Uh . . . Doesn't have an official name, just a designation. CX-431. There's three planets, but the first doesn't really count, since it's a nice, toasty rock. Says here the atmosphere burned away a couple millenia ago. Then there's CX-431 Alpha, and CX-431 Beta. Beta's a gas giant. Alpha's the one Starfleet wants us to peek in on."

He turned to the navigator and pilot. "Hey, Sulu, how close are we to CX-431?"

"We should be there in a few minutes, Captain," Hikaru Sulu replied. "Coming out of warp now."

The Enterprise dropped out of warp, and they found themselves at the edge of a small solar system, with a yellow sun similar to Earth's. Near them floated CX-431 Beta, a blue-green gas giant nearly as large as Jupiter. The system was on the edge of a brilliantly coloured nebula, space awash with purple, blue, green, and red gases.

"Wouldja look at that," Bones said. "Now that's somethin' to look at."

"Yeah, it's . . . Okay, it's pretty," Kirk laughed.

"Pretty, Captain?" Spock asked from behind him.

"Well, yeah! Look at it, Spock! It's all rainbow-y and sparkly!"

Over at the communications station, Uhura snorted.

The planet they were aiming for was currently closest to the nebula, in its orbit around the star. It, too, was jewel-like, with green fields, blue oceans, and white, fluffy clouds. Smaller than Earth, just a little, it looked peaceful and serene.

"Scan for seismic activity, volcanos, that kind of thing," Kirk directed his crew. "Also life. Just for the hell of it."

"Yes, sir."

Spock moved to stand next to Kirk's chair. "It certainly looks habitable. Perhaps we should make an excursion to the surface, and-"

"Captain," Sulu said, interrupting the first officer. "I'm picking up life signs on the surface. Seventy-fo- no, seventy-five individual signatures."

Kirk had been leaning back in his chair, somewhat lazily, and now he sat forward. "Run that by me again?"

"Seventy-five individual life signatures. They're registering as humanoid."

The Vulcan tipped his head. "Perhaps, Captain, a nearby system has ventured out to colonise? Brinthini, perhaps?"

Jim Kirk stared at the planet, as it grew larger in the viewscreen. "I dunno, Spock. I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Is that not a quote from a fictional character in the 'Star Wars' series?" Spock inquired. "That disreputable smuggler, I believe."

"Shut up, Spock, Han Solo's awesome. Sulu, you've got the con. Spock, we're going down to the surface. Uhura, you're with us. We might need to talk to people."

* * *

Their new home was almost done. Anthea was pleased with the space. It wasn't fancy, but Khan and Joachim had put in fireplaces in both the living room and in the master bedroom. Annoying as he was, it turned out Joachim was actually good for something.

"This is lovely," she told her husband.

"We still need to finish installing the generator and the electricity. And I'm afraid the plumbing isn't quite up to twenty-third century standards."

"Alright, so I didn't put toilets on the list of things to steal from Starfleet."

He snorted.

"It'll be fine. We'll upgrade when we make a trip to Brinthini to trade. We may not have a lot in products, but I stashed away a fortune in Vulcan, Romulan, Klingon, Betazed, and Ferengi credits, just to name a few."

Khan made a face at the mention of Klingons, but before he could make any snide remarks about the species, he was interrupted.

"Khan!" Otto burst into the cabin. "Khan, there is a . . . vessel approaching."

"What kind?"

His lieutenant hesitated. "I . . . do not know, Kaiser."

Immediately on alert, Khan strode out of the cabin and grabbed one of the phaser rifles from the table at the centre of camp, one he himself had designed while at Starfleet. Anthea was hot on his heels, Nolan tucked against her side.

It was a Starfleet shuttle, emblazoned with "NCC-1701" on the side, and it had just come to rest at the edge of the village.

"Shit," Anthea said vehemently.

"Sit!" Nolan repeatedly gleefully.

Khan spared her one brief, amused look before levelling the rifle at the door of the shuttle. "I thought, darling, you said they didn't know where we are," he said.

"I took great pains," she said, "but Kirk seems to have preternatural luck."

Anthea was decidedly less than thrilled at the thought of seeing James Kirk again. She'd met the man only once, a year before, and things had been left very awkwardly. At the time, she hadn't known Khan was still alive, and she had, in a moment of extreme weakness and loneliness, had one night of . . . not precisely passion, but intimacy with the Starfleet captain. Her husband was aware of it, and didn't seem to be angry with her.

Kirk's continued safety over the matter was little more debatable.

As they watched, the ramp of the small vessel lowered. Out of it stepped four people: James Kirk, the Vulcan named Spock, Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, and a lithesome blonde Anthea was disgusted to recognise as Dr. Carol Marcus.

"Oh, look, it's the brat who can't keep her nose out of things," Anthea muttered to her husband.

"I see she's walking again," he replied in kind.

"Why wasn't she walking?"

"I broke her leg."

Anthea didn't blame him in the slightest. If Carol Marcus had been able to keep out of their business two years before, Khan wouldn't have had to flee Starfleet, or fear for her life and those of his people. He would have been able to smuggle them to safety. She wouldn't have spent so long without him.

Their unwelcome guests approached with their hands up, well aware they were walking into a situation they had no chance of leaving if they pissed off the colony's leader. Kirk took the fore, hands above his head.

At last, the tall, burly blonde captain spoke. "You know, when we scanned and detected life down here, this was _not_ what I was expecting to find. Hello again, Khan."

"James Tiberius Kirk," Khan intoned. He flicked a switch on the rifle, changing it from "stun" to "kill". "I cannot say it's a pleasure."

The landing party from the Enterprise waited in tense silence, knowing they were sitting ducks if Khan and his men decided to press their advantage.

"Get off our planet," Khan growled. "This is not Federation territory. We have claimed this world as our own. Have you not done enough to us, Captain?"

Anthea pushed his rifle down, so that it wasn't aimed directly at the Starfleet captain. "All we want is to be left alone," she told Kirk. "To not be imprisoned and exploited and used as slaves."

"'We'?" Uhura repeated, stepping forward. "You're not one of them!"

"You do not speak to Kaiser Khan's wife so!" Otto burst out, and several others grumbled their agreement.

Khan held up a hand, silencing his men with a simple gesture. "My wife is, indeed, one of us," he said. "Any who suggests she is not will face my wrath."

Kirk took a few steps towards them. "I should arrest you and haul you back to Earth!" he exploded, pointing at Anthea.

"Over my dead body!" Khan roared, and brought his rifle back up.

Anthea handed Nolan to Kati and shoved between the two men, bracing a hand on each of their chests. They were both considerably taller than she, but they stopped advancing on each other when they realised she was in their way.

"Khan," she said softly. "Let me handle this."

Her husband's jaw tightened in anger, but he gave a terse nod.

She looked to Kirk. "Don't do this. We came here to live in peace."

"He's a criminal!" Kirk burst out. "And so are you!"

"And it's not a crime to condemn a man to an eternity in frozen silence, without a trial?" She had to tip her head up to look at him. "Please . . . Jim."

The way she said his name instantly transported him to a year ago, in his apartment near Headquarters, when she'd cried in his arms over the death of her husband. When she'd let him seduce her, while he'd known that Khan was, in fact, still alive.

He shoved aside the memory of her writhing in his arms and gritted his teeth. "Fine. For _now_, I won't kill him."

"_Ever_," she snapped. "I'm not kidding, Kirk. All we want is to live here, quietly, on our own, and not be subject to the whims of Starfleet."

"You and your husband are fugitives," he said. "You broke at least a dozen regulations doing this-"

"It may come as a surprise to you, Kirk, but my family is more important to me than the whole of Starfleet. Which, let me remind you, I joined before _you_ did. Don't lecture me about regulation or the bloody Prime Directive or what-have-you. We're not in Federation space, and these people are not Federation citizens."

She jabbed him in the chest with a finger. "Now, you can finish your bloody survey or whatever the hell it is that brought you here, but when you're done, you need to get the hell off our planet."

"It's not your-"

"It is _now_," Anthea said. "It's not a Federation territory and there are no other claims on it, aside from ours. That makes it _our_ planet."

Khan rested the rifle against his shoulder. "She happens to be correct, Captain. Even according to your precious Federation law, which we do not recognise as we are not part of it, this planet is ours now. I'll give you one day to conduct your survey, but then I expect you to leave this system and forget we are here."

Kirk folded his arms across his chest. "And if I don't? How will you make us leave the system?"

"Kirk," Khan drawled. "If you're not off this planet within twenty-four hours, I will make sure you don't _ever_ leave it."

He stalked off, back towards the cabin construction site, leaving Anthea to be the less volatile diplomat.


	9. Chapter Eight

**-Chapter Eight-**

Kirk turned to Anthea, who held her hand up to forestall anything he might have said.

"You may be under the delusion you have any say here, Kirk, but you don't. I did that on purpose. Now, if you'll excuse me, we actually have to work for a living here, and I have things to do." She headed towards the cargo hold of the _Reliance_, skirt fluttering, to retrieve some things she'd need when the house was finished. To her annoyance, Kirk followed her aboard the ship.

"I have nothing more to say to you, Captain," she shot over her shoulder. "I've said everything already."

Kirk caught her arm, pulled her back. "Anthea. What are you doing with this guy? I mean, seriously? He's a monster."

She yanked herself free. "He's my _husband_, Captain Kirk. The one you conveniently forgot to mention was _still alive_ when you took advantage of me. At least he's honest with me."

"You're right. I shouldn't have- Didn't we discuss this a year ago? Agreed it shouldn't have happened?"

"That doesn't change the fact that you lied to me and you-" She gritted her teeth. "Do you have _any_ idea how it made me feel to learn that my husband, the man I _love_, was imprisoned in a cryotube and I- let you do things to me that-"

She couldn't even get the words out.

"Fine. I'm guilty of being a man. I didn't think you needed to know. You were better off thinking he was dead."

"No, I _wasn't_!" she screamed, slamming her fist into his chest. "Do you have any idea what it's like to lose someone, Kirk, someone whose loss feels like half of you has been ripped away? Of course you don't, so you don't _care_ how badly I ached without him. You have no _concept_ of what it was like, waking every morning without him, not knowing if he was alive or dead, suspecting he'd been killed but not _knowing_. All the unanswered questions, the pain, and you took advantage of me when all I wanted to know was _where my husband was_."

Kirk looked stricken, the colour draining out of his face, as he realised just how mistaken he'd been about her motives all this time. "I'm . . . sorry," he said. "I didn't think-"

"That doesn't absolve you, and it doesn't absolve me. It makes me _sick_ to think of what I did. I lied to Khan and told him I instigated it to get information out of you. If he were to find out the truth, Kirk, he would _kill_ you. And I'm not thrilled at the idea of having him angry at me, either."

Kirk shook his head. "There's no reason he would find out the truth."

"Is there not?"

The low timbre of Khan's voice came to them from the doorway. Anthea took an instinctive step back from Kirk. "Khan," she said.

Her husband stepped into the hold with a deceptively casual poise. His hands were relaxed at his sides, but Anthea knew him well enough to see he was seething with rage. Sometimes, he hid it really well, but she knew him now. She knew what the little tic by his right eye meant.

"I came to get a bandage from the medbay," he explained, "as Joachim hammered a nail into his thumb. I do not know what I'll do with that boy. Imagine my worry, hearing my wife screaming at someone."

"We were just discussing . . ."

"Oh, I heard every word. Every word that was relevant, at least. I suspected you weren't telling me the whole truth," he said to Anthea, but he never took his eyes off Kirk. "You are not _that_ ruthless, my love."

Kirk stepped between Khan and Anthea. "Don't you even think about hurting her!"

Khan's smile was cold. "Captain, Captain, Captain! I would never _dream_ of laying a hand on my beloved wife. You see, I understand that she was alone for so long, that she thought me dead. Why wouldn't she, if she thought she was a widow, find solace? I cannot blame her for that."

Then his eyes went from chilly to nuclear in a millisecond. "But _you_, Kirk. _You_ knew what she did not. You admitted just now that you lied to her, tricked her into breaking vows she takes seriously enough to violate your precious Prime Directive for me, to commit treason for my people."

"Look, Khan, it was a mistake, we'd been drinking-"

In a dark blur, Khan closed the space between them, his fist pounding Kirk right in the face with the force of a bullet train. The blonde man's head snapped back and he flew several feet. Before he landed, Khan caught Kirk with a hand around the younger man's throat, and slammed him into the wall, suspended off the floor by the one-handed grip.

"I can forgive her," he hissed, as Kirk choked. "Because I love her, and I understand her. But _you_ . . ."

Kirk's fingers scrabbled at Khan's hand, couldn't find sufficient purchase to break his hold. Not that he would have been able to. No one could match Khan Noonien Singh for sheer physical strength, not even that Vulcan, Spock. The only way Spock had won that fight was through Uhura's intervention, and his own dazement after the crash. Kirk was only alive _now_ because Khan still held back. He could have taken Kirk's head clean off if he'd wanted to. After all, tearing one _off_ was only a small step up from crushing a skull with one's bare hands.

The Starfleet captain's face was red, and he gasped, desperate for air.

"Khan," Anthea said. "Please, don't kill him."

He tipped his head her direction, though he didn't look over. "Do you have some affection for him, _wife_?"

She might have once had a lingering . . . fondness that came from their one, shared night, but no longer. "No, I just don't want to deal with the consequences if we end up with a dead Starfleet captain on our hands. He's Starfleet's golden boy, remember? Also, the cleanup isn't something I feel like dealing with today. Do you know how difficult it is to get blood out of silk?"

Khan turned his head, regarded her in silence for several moments, with a slight smile.

Then he let go of Kirk, and the younger man collapsed to the floor, wheezing as he sucked in much-needed oxygen. Khan aimed a savage kick at the prone Kirk's ribs.

Anthea caught her husband's arm. "Khan! Khan. Don't kill him."

Khan shifted his attention her, his gaze softening. He gently stroked her cheek, once again the picture of calm. "I _do_ forgive you," he told her softly. "What you did for _me_ is enough to forgive any number of sins."

Then he pulled away, turned on one bootheel, and stalked out before his control snapped and he killed the whelp after all.

Kirk rolled to his knees and doubled over, coughing violently. Anthea looked down at him somewhat dispassionately, much calmer than she'd been before.

"Did I mention that my husband has super-hearing, Captain?" she asked. "I said I didn't have anything to discuss with you."

Kirk turned blood-shot blue eyes up to her. "Still can't believe you _married_ that guy." His words were broken and hoarse.

"Love makes us do crazy things sometimes, Captain Kirk. At least I know I can trust him."

"He lied to you for months, though!"

"Not about what mattered, Captain. He never lied about loving me, and he never lied to me about the most important things in our lives." She crouched, didn't offer him any assistance. "You see, I understand now why he did the things he did. He was protecting me from Marcus by keeping me in the dark. You ever stop to think, Kirk, what Marcus would have done to me if he'd known I'm Khan's wife? I would have died, and Nolan with me."

By now, Kirk was on his knees. He cleared his throat, did it again. "He's killed people."

"Technically, so have I. So have you. What Khan didn't tell you, when he was imprisoned on your ship, is that Marcus threatened to kill me just for being _close_ to him. The man you saw then thought he had lost _everything_. Would you do any different?"

"I wouldn't go rampaging around, killing people indiscriminately in revenge!"

Anthea smiled wryly. "But isn't that what you did, Kirk? When you took those torpedoes to Qo'noS, intending to kill my husband? You didn't kill Khan, in the end, but wasn't that fueled by the need for revenge? If you think it wasn't, you're more deluded than I thought."

She rose, leaving him there, and exited the hold. She found Khan waiting for her there.

"I'm sorry," she told him. "That I didn't tell you the whole truth."

Wordlessly, he caught her hand, hauled her down the corridor to the medbay. Yves was there, and Khan snapped, "Out!"

Once Yves had vacated the room, Khan locked the door, shoved Anthea against it, and kissed her _hard_. Part of her hated that it thrilled her when he got demanding and pushy like this. The rest really didn't care.

"Khan," she gasped. "Is this really the best-"

"Shut up," he growled. "It's this or I go back in there and I tear Kirk limb from limb."

"I wouldn't want _that_ on my conscience," she murmured wryly, and stood on her toes to kiss him.


	10. Chapter Nine

**-Chapter Nine-**

Spock arched a brow at his captain when Kirk emerged from the _Reliance_. The human's face was red and swollen, the beginnings of bruising around the eye and cheekbone rivalling the ring forming around his neck.

"I'm only gonna say this once," Kirk muttered, "but I deserved it."

"Am I to assume that you ran afoul of the colony's leader?" Spock inquired. ". . . Again?"

Carol exclaimed in dismay when she saw him. "What happened?"

"Khan took exception to my, uh . . ." Kirk cleared his throat. His larynx was bruised, as well. "I sorta . . . slept with his wife last year."

"It is a wonder you are still breathing, as that was a spectacularly foolish thing to do," Spock observed.

"Anthea stopped him." Kirk avoided looking at Carol.

"And yet, he does not have issue with _her_ actions?"

"Apparently not. Can we change the subject?"

He'd overheard quite a bit from Khan and Anthea-mostly Anthea-as he'd passed the medbay on his way out of the ship, and Kirk couldn't help feeling a little irritated. She hadn't sounded like _that_ when _he'd_- Kirk stopped that thought in its tracks. Obviously, there was something wrong with the woman, that she'd let him treat her that way. But it was none of his business, as Khan had made painfully clear.

"Let's get that survey done," he croaked at Spock. "And get the hell off this rock."

"I was under the impression you wished to bring Khan and his people into custody, or Anthea Harrison at the very least."

Kirk gestured to the little village, where nearly everyone watched them. "We're outnumbered, Spock. Seriously. We'd have to blast them from orbit to get them into custody, and there's a kid over there I don't feel like hurting today."

Carol took his arm as they got back into the shuttle. "You need Dr. McCoy to look at you. I think your cheekbone is fractured."

"Yeah, well, considering the guy hits like a Mack truck . . ." Kirk touched his cheek, winced. "Uhura, contact Bones, get him to beam down. We shoulda brought him down the first time."

"You had no way of knowing Khan would-" Carol began, but Kirk interrupted.

"I suspected," he said. "When Sulu said there were seventy-five people down here? I suspected. Seventy-three Augments, including Khan, and his wife and kid."

"But you couldn't _know_," she insisted softly. "Don't beat yourself up about it."

Kirk laughed bitterly. "Ah! Ow! He did that enough _for_ me. Jeez, that hurts."

Spock and Uhura moved into the cockpit, giving them a small amount of privacy.

"You never mentioned that you'd . . . slept with her," Carol said.

He looked down at his hands. "It was just once, a year ago, and it's not something I'm real proud of, Carol. I'm sorry. I'm saying that a lot today."

"If you think I'm hurt, or angry, I'm not," she whispered.

"No, no. For bringing you down here when I suspected it was Khan. I forgot for a minute that he . . . killed your dad."

The blonde woman sighed and shifted to sit in the seat beside him. "My father . . . brought his death on himself, Jim. Do I like being near the man who killed him? Heavens, no. And I'd likely kill him myself if I could. But you don't poke a tiger and then get offended when it bites your arm off. My father knew Khan was a tiger, and he put him in a cage and prodded him until he snapped. I loved my father, but . . . I cannot hold Khan _entirely_ to blame."

"Really? After what Khan did, right in front of you?"

"Oh, I'm angry, unbelievably angry. I just recognise that Dad made himself a target. I'm angry at Khan, I'm angry at Dad . . ."

He turned caught her hand. "You're not angry at me for anything, are you?"

She smiled a little. "No. I'm not angry at you."

Uhura turned in her seat and called back, "Dr. McCoy is on his way, Captain. He said he'll get his medkit and beam down. He also said to tell you that you owe him."

"Of course I do," Kirk muttered. "Thank you, Lieutenant."

Just a few minutes passed before a knock sounded at the shuttle door, and Bones appeared with his medkit. He took one look at Kirk and did a double-take.

"Kid, you look like you went twelve rounds with Mohammed Ali."

"Who?" Kirk asked.

Bones opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed his mouth. "What happened?"

"Went _half_ a round with Khan. Meaning I opened my big mouth and he attempted to kill me."

The doctor snorted. "And here I thought your near-death experience had tempered some of that stupidity," he snarked. "Wait a minute. Khan?"

"Yes," Carol said. "It seems we've stumbled across the missing dictator and his people."

"Huh." Bones pulled out some equipment and set about dealing with Kirk's injuries. He injected Kirk with something just behind his jaw. "Did you know your face is broken?"

"No, I dithn't," Kirk said sarcastically. "Dathe it, Boneth!"

"Had to numb you, you wouldn't like this one if I didn't." Bones injected him with something else.

Kirk shrieked.

". . . Okay, you'd like it _even less_ if I hadn't numbed you."

The captain batted at his face. "Boneth! Whad'd you _do_?! Ahhh!"

Carol gave the doctor a worried look.

"It's a new serum for bone repair," Bones explained. "Haven't had the chance to test it 'til now. I suppose I could have asked Khan for some of his blood, but under the circumstances, probably don't have a very good chance of that, right?"

"Dabbit!" Kirk gasped. "I gonna kill you!"

"Don't be such a baby. It's the fastest way to fix your face."

The searing pain subsided finally and Kirk sagged against the bulkhead, glaring at Bones with tears streaming from his eyes, an involuntary reaction from the pain. "Theriouthly, Boneth, I gonna kill you an' make you inna thoeth."

"Pardon?" Carol murmured.

"Shoes," Bones said, translating for Kirk. "He's gonna make me into shoes. Good luck with that, by the way."

Kirk shot him a rude gesture, and McCoy laughed.

* * *

Anthea was still straightening her long skirt when she emerged from the _Reliance_ and went to retrieve Nolan from Kati.

"I am surprised there was not bloodshed," Kati remarked as Anthea took the toddler.

"There was, actually, but it's settled for the moment." Anthea checked her son, but he seemed to be unperturbed by the goings-on.

Kati frowned, looking a lot like her brother when she did. "What was that about? Who are these people?"

"They're from Starfleet," Anthea told her. "Captain James Kirk and his crew, of the _USS Enterprise_. Remember, I told you about them going after Khan?"

"Oh, yes. The blonde man is the captain? He is not how I pictured him." Kati looked over at the closed-up shuttle. "A man arrived a few minutes ago. He appeared in a light."

Nolan reached up and grabbed Anthea's nose. She laughed and kissed his small hand. "That would be transporter technology. It means we can teleport from ship to surface. The _Reliance_ has a two transporter pads, but we haven't used them."

"Oh. That is so interesting. I think I would like to experience it someday."

"Maybe we can do that sometimes. Some people don't like the sensation. Who was the man that beamed down?"

"Beamed? Oh, teleported? I do not know. He had a black case with him."

"Likely their doctor," Anthea said. "Given the beating Khan gave Kirk."

Kati arched a raven brow. "Why did he do that?"

"Let's just say that there are . . . tensions between them. They've tried to kill each other several times in the past."

"And yet, they both defer to you?"

Anthea pressed her cheek to the top of her son's head. "I was . . . very briefly involved with Kirk, a long time ago. And they're both aware of it."

Her sister-in-law snorted. "Male posturing over a female?"

She thought of Khan strangling the life out of Kirk, and why. "Something like that."

* * *

When the shuttle left to conduct its surveys, Dr. McCoy opted to stay in the village and observe "the locals". He was the only one of the _Enterprise_ crew Anthea could actually say she _liked_, mostly because he took his oath to help others seriously, and he had been so good with Nolan the first time they'd met.

As soon as Yves discovered there was a twenty-third century doctor on-planet, he sought out McCoy and the two men immediately hit it off.

"Irritated as I am that they are here, I think Yves's new friendship with Dr. McCoy could be advantageous," Khan remarked in an undertone to Anthea. "He is, after all, the man who derived the serum from my blood, and could give us insights into how to help Kati."

"And Yves learning some modern medicine might be useful later, what with the baby and all. I know women have been doing it for millenia, but I'm still scared."

"Yes, I agree." Khan rubbed his hand over her back.

Anthea smiled to herself. Ever since she'd told him she was pregnant, he'd become more publically affectionate. It might also have had some influence from the subtle hostility towards her from certain quarters, but Anthea thought the baby had more to do with it. He was happy and less defensive against the world at large, secure in their relationship, and it spilled out.

She leaned her head against his shoulder. "What will we do if Kirk won't leave?"

"I'm not sure. I need to find leverage with the man. Something he needs enough to make him compromise his overdeveloped sense of right and wrong."

His wife chuckled.

"What is it you find so amusing?"

"Just that we're so casually discussing coersion and extortion, as if we were discussing the weather."

He smiled faintly. "Kirk has gone to survey, but I'm certain he's thinking of a way to capture me, our people, and imprison us again."

"We dismantled all but two of the cryotubes, recycled them into refrigerators," she pointed out. "That's the only way he could possibly keep you locked down. And if he tries, I'll kill him."

Khan laughed and kissed her temple. "I adore you."

She ducked her head. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you the whole truth, about Kirk. I felt so . . . stupid and used, and I didn't want to admit that I'd . . ."

"Anthea." Khan turned her, gripped her arms. "I am not angry with you. Desperate times make us do desperate things. I hate the thought of you in another man's arms, but I understand why. It was a single indiscretion, and it worked in our favour in the end. What enrages me is that he lied to you, and that he thinks he has some sway over you."

"He doesn't hold anything over me," she assured him softly. "Since I met you, I've never wanted anyone else. That night with Kirk was . . . because I was so lonely, and he acted as if he cared."

Her husband drew her close. "I know your reasons, Thea. You don't need to explain."

She sighed. "I tried so hard to find someplace Starfleet wouldn't come, at least for a long time. And yet . . . How did they find us so quickly?"

"As you said, Kirk possesses an unnatural amount of luck."

Nolan, his leash pinned under Khan's foot, toddled over from inspecting a stick and grabbed his father's pantleg in grubby hands, trying to haul himself up. Khan stooped to lift his son into his arms. Nolan thunked his head against Khan's chest, a blissful smile on his little face.

Khan looked down at his son, a little bemused. "Is there anything in particular you wanted, Nolan?"

"Hug Dada," the seventeen-month-old said. "Love Dada."

His father's face went through a wide array of emotions in the space of a few seconds. Watching the visible struggle, Anthea could barely contain a grin. Khan tried so hard to be the invincible and stoic leader, and then Nolan went and did something that turned the former dictator to mush.

Khan brushed his lips against the top of his son's head. He caught the look on his wife's face, and flashed her a grin. "My weakness," he told her softly. "You and Nolan are my Achilles' heel."

"It's okay to have one. You and No are mine."

"I can't imagine _you_ having one."

Anthea reached over, ran a fingertip over the curve of Nolan's ear. "You didn't see me at my worst. I could barely hold it together after I lost you."

"But you managed," he whispered.

"Only because I had our baby to live for. I really don't know what would have happened if . . ." She trailed off, nodded her head. "Incoming. Doctor McCoy."

Khan stiffened. Feeling his father's tension, Nolan turned his head to see what was going on.

"Doctor McCoy," Khan said, greeting the Starfleet officer.

McCoy's brown eyes flicked over to Anthea. "I've been talking to your doctor," he told Khan. "You've got some interesting theories, but I think I found the flaw in your work."

Arching a black brow, Khan handed Nolan to Anthea. "There was a flaw?" he drawled.

"A very tiny one. We were thinking you'd like to come have a look." McCoy turned to Nolan. "Would it be possible to bring the kid, and your sister?"

"Go ahead," Anthea said. "I'll go find Kati and bring her and Nolan along."

Khan gave her a nod, and he followed the doctor to the the Reliance. Nolan reached up and caught a handful of Anthea's hair.

"No, sweetie," she said. "Don't grab Mummy's hair. Let's go find Auntie Kati, hmm? Daddy needs her."


	11. Chapter Ten

**-Chapter Ten-**

When Anthea carried Nolan into the medbay, she had to suppress a momentary flashback to earlier. Catching Khan's eye, she saw him smirk briefly. Damn the man. How did he always know what she was thinking?

Kati trailed behind her. She'd been experimenting with dyes made from local plants, and had made herself a brightly-patterned sari, wearing it over the utilitarian clothes Anthea had managed to acquire from Starfleet. She and Khan didn't subscribe to any particular religion or social traditions; she just liked the look, she'd told Anthea, and it reminded her of home.

Nolan tried to leap from his mother's arms, chanting, "Dadadadadada!" Khan plucked him up, before he could tumble to the floor. Holding the squirmy child with one arm, he said to McCoy, "My sister, Khatri Kaur. Kati, this is Doctor Leonard McCoy."

McCoy glanced up from the microscope, then did a double-take. He quicly scrambled to his feet and held out a hand. "Pleased to meet you, Miss Kaur."

Kati shot a smirk at Anthea, then shook the doctor's hand. "Please, call me Kati. You are with Starfleet?"

"I am, yeah. I'm the chief medical officer on the _USS Enterprise_. Please, have a seat so I can get a look at you, see if we can do something about this problem of yours."

"Certainly, Doctor McCoy." Kati boosted herself up onto one of the beds and folded her hands in her lap, smiling at the doctor.

Behind McCoy, Khan raised both brows. He turned an astonished look at his wife. Beside him, Yves looked thunderous.

Anthea sidled up to Khan and murmured, "I think Kati has a fan."

To Yves, she said under her breath, "As an American classmate of mine at the Academy was fond of saying, 'You snooze, you lose'."

Since McCoy was occupied with Kati, Anthea took the opportunity to extract a blood sample from Nolan, while Khan held their son. She took as little as possible, hating it the whole time. When she was done, even though it was a painless procedure, she kissed Nolan's little arm.

"All done, sweetheart," she murmured. "Shall I take him, or do you still need him?"

Khan handed Nolan over. "You can take him. If we need him for anything, I'll find you."

"Okay." She gave his forearm a squeeze, winked at Kati, and left the medbay.

Anthea dragged Nolan's playpen in from his room and set it up by her work station, plopping him down in it with his bunny. He rolled to his back and hugged the fuzzy green toy to his chest.

Pulling up her log on the computer, she started a new entry.

_Dear Mum and Dad,_

_I've lost count of what day it is for the colony. We've _  
_finished all but the last cabin now. Khan was working on it_  
_until the ship from Starfleet showed up._

_I had hoped that they would never find us, but I figured _  
_they would eventually. I never expected it to be so soon, or_  
_for it to be the _USS Enterprise_. In all honesty, the inevitable  
confrontation between Khan and Captain Jim Kirk_ _went a  
lot better than I anticipated, meaning that Kirk was able  
to walk away from it._

_Kirk wants to take Khan and his people back into custody. I_  
_don't know how we're going to dissuade him otherwise. I can't_  
_go through losing Khan again. I will personally kill Kirk if_  
_I have to, to keep my husband here. I'm pregnant again, and_  
_a repeat of two years ago would destroy me, I think._

_Doctor Leonard McCoy is here, working with Khan and Yves to_  
_find a solution to Kati's illness. I like Dr McCoy. He's a bit of a  
curmudgeon, but Kati seems to have charmed him. I think she  
may be flirting with him to make Yves jealous, but I don't  
know. It's nice of him to help us, considering that Khan  
attempted to destroy the _Enterprise_ and, by extension,_  
_kill Dr McCoy._

_I want Starfleet to just go and leave us alone, but I can't_  
_think of a way to get Kirk to-_

The chime at her door sounded. Anthea saved and closed the file before she went to answer it. Yves was there, looking distraught.

"He is flirting with her!" he burst out. "And she with him!"

Stifling a sigh, Anthea stepped aside to let him in. She hoped the Starfleet incursion ended soon, because the drama they'd caused was quickly going to be unbearable.

* * *

The early morning was taken up with running scans on Kati's brain functions, and with readying a serum that McCoy had apparently been up all night fiddling with. Khan had been there with him for most of it, so Anthea hadn't slept well as a result. She never did sleep well without her husband beside her.

Her morning sickness wasn't helping matters. She didn't always throw up, but the frequent nausea and the fatigue made her feel vile. Only Khan's request that she be there for the testing of the serum had her up and in the medbay.

She sat off to the side, watching quietly, as they ran the scans and established current baselines for her brainwaves. Kati looked nervous, so Anthea moved over to stand beside her, holding her sister-in-law's hand as McCoy administered the serum.

"I don't know how fast this'll work," the doctor cautioned. "Or _if_ it will."

"It is worth a try," Kati told him.

He injected her with something to induce a coma, and Kati went limp, eyes closing. Her vital signs dropped, jumped, dropped again, and then stablized.

Khan stood on the other side of Kati's bed, eyes fixed on the readout of her vital signs. His tension sang through the room.

"You see this part here?" McCoy said, indicating the brain map. "This is the damaged part. Every seizure causes damage, increasing the risk of another seizure, and we gotta repair that as well as fix whatever caused the nervous system problem in the first place. Otherwise it'll just start all over again."

The map lit up as the serum found its way through Kati's blood to her brain. The woman on the table hissed and jerked, in spite of her unconscious state.

"See, this is why human cloning and genetics manipulation like you guys is banned," McCoy muttered. "Even now, the results are unpredictable."

"If she dies-" Khan began.

"She won't die. I isolated the gene that made her reject your blood and neutralized it. That's what happening now. I feel like I'm playing God here, you know. Rewriting a woman's DNA."

It took hours. The serum burned its way through Kati's entire body, through every cell fed by her blood, and flipped the switch that kept Khan's blood from fixing her. Then McCoy administered the second serum, the one created from a mixture of Khan's and Nolan's blood. That one specifically targeted her nervous system. Anthea didn't really know how it all worked. She didn't need to know. She was there for moral support for Khan, just in case things went wrong.

Kati's vitals fluctuated, and her muscles tensed and relaxed in erratic spasms. McCoy kept stealing glances at Khan, as if bewildered that the man _he_ knew as a killing machine was so worried over his sister.

At last, the woman on the bed relaxed and her vitals stabilized once more. McCoy lifted one of her eyelids, flashed her with a light.

"I'm gonna keep her in the coma until afternoon," he said at last. "Just so we can watch her. Then I'll bring her out of it and we'll see what effect it's had, but going from her brain map, it seems like it's repaired the seizure damage to her right hemisphere."

Khan finally relaxed. "Thank you, Doctor."

"Just so we're clear, I did it for her, not you."

"I had no delusion otherwise, Doctor McCoy. Nevertheless, you have my thanks."

* * *

The _Enterprise_'s shuttle returned shortly before McCoy was scheduled to bring Kati out of her coma. Because Khan was with his sister, Anthea went out to greet it, reluctant as she was.

"You done with our doctor?" Kirk asked, as he left the shuttle.

"Just about. He's in our medbay with my sister-in-law. How did your survey go?"

"Same results as the previous one, which I'm _sure_ you have."

"As a matter of face, I _do_," she replied sweetly. "Now, about you _leaving_-"

McCoy appeared, exiting the Reliance. He was followed by Khan.

"She's awake," the doctor said. "Jim, you're back!"

"Who's awake?" Kirk asked.

Khan ignored the captain. "Her vitals are good, and there is no sign of abnormal brainwaves. It seems it worked. You have my heartfelt thanks, Doctor McCoy."

"Again, _who_?"

"My sister-in-law," Anthea reminded Kirk. "As I just said. Doctor McCoy was kind enough to see if he could assist us with Kati's epilepsy."

"I think it worked, but I'm gonna stick with 'cautiously optimistic'."

Kirk frowned. "Oh . . . kaaaaay."

Khan finally looked at Kirk. "Which brings us to our unresolved problem. What do I need to do, to convince you to leave us here?"

Kirk's jaw clenched. "I-"

"Captain!" Uhura came out of the shuttle, looking upset. "_Enterprise_ just sent us a message; they caught a distress call from a nearby system. They're being attacked by Klingons. At least one raiding party is on the surface."

It all went through Kirk's brain in a flash: Qo'noS, fighting a patrol of Klingons. Their small party nearly dying until a very unlikely rescuer appeared and single-handedly took them out.

Klingons didn't have much of a fighting chance against the _Enterprise_ when it came to space battles, but on the surface . . .

He turned, looked at Khan. The other man's face was impassive, but he clearly understood, had likely realised it seconds before Kirk himself.

"We can't take them on alone," the Starfleet officer said, his voice rough. "And I can't sit back and let those people get killed."

"My people will help on one condition," Khan informed him, somehow managing to keep the gloating out of his voice. Finally, he had the leverage he'd wanted. "You leave us here, to live out our lives in peace, and you do not tell Starfleet where we are."

It wasn't even really a question, in the end. What choice did he have?

"Done," Kirk said.


	12. Chapter Eleven

**-Chapter Eleven-**

Khan quickly selected twenty of his men, opting to leave Otto in charge, Chin as his second. Thirty-one of the colonists were women, forty-one men, not including Khan and Anthea, and twenty of the men leaving took half of the toughest warriors. The women, too, were capable fighters, but a good number of them had expressed to Khan they did not want to be soldiers any longer and had no wish to go along to fight Klingons.

"They're becoming too domesticated," Khan muttered good-naturedly, as he selected a phaser rifle from the table.

"I will make them go hunting," Otto said. "Keep their edge up."

Kati shuffled out of the _Reliance_, looking tired. Anthea couldn't imagine how the woman felt after what her body had been put through. "What is going on?"

"We're going to hunt Klingons," Khan said. "They''ve attacked a nearby system and I intend to deal with the threat."

His sister frowned. "And leave Anthea here?"

"I don't want to go," Anthea said quickly, before Khan could say anything. "I'm good staying here. I'd like to get a start on decorating the cabin, anyway."

"We should not be gone long," her husband assured her.

Yves appeared beside Kati. "What are you doing out here? You need to rest! Come back inside!"

Khan watched the doctor guide her back to the ship.

"I don't want you to go," Anthea whispered. "What if this is a ploy to capture you again?"

Khan caught her face in his hands, his voice a low rumble meant for her ears only. "That's why I'm leaving some of my people here. If I do not return, you can use the Reliance to come after me. That said, I believe Kirk's desperation to save these people, to clean up after the attack at the least, is very real. This is my chance to strike a deal with him, my love. If I do this, he will leave us alone. I don't believe James Tiberius Kirk is a man to betray his own honour. He is too much . . . how did you put it? Starfleet's golden boy."

A memory flashed in his mind, of the bridge of the USS Vengeance. When faced with Admiral Alexander Marcus's plan to start a war with the Klingons, Kirk could have easily shot the man, killed him to stop him. But he hadn't. He'd wanted to stun him and force him to stand trial back on Earth. It had been Khan who had taken the step to deal with the matter directly. Kirk was too good, didn't have the _guts_, as Marcus had said.

Anthea pressed her hand to his upper abdomen, then fisted his shirt in her hand. "Okay. But you come back to me this time, alright? You disappear again and I won't sit back and wait. I will hunt you down."

Khan grinned. Not caring that they had Kirk and his crew for an audience, he dipped his head to kiss her rather thoroughly. She sighed, pressing closer. He kissed like no other, with singular and intense purpose.

"I will be back," he murmured against her mouth. "You can be sure of that. Nothing will keep us apart again, Thea. I would raze Heaven and Hell to reach you."

"You'd better. I love you."

He pressed a kiss to her ear. "And I love you, my Thea. Be safe whilst I'm gone. I'll be back soon."

Then he stepped away. Before her eyes, he shifted from devoted husband to warrior, his face going hard, losing all expression. It sent a shiver down her spine.

He gestured to the men he'd selected to join him. They all filed aboard the shuttle. It would be a tight fit, but only the Starfleet officers would complain.

At the door, Kirk and Khan were the last to board. They stared at each other in macho silence, then Khan gave a brief nod and stepped through the door. Kirk paused, glanced back at her, shook head head, and went aboard.

Kati stepped up beside Anthea and handed Nolan over. "Men," she said. "Though I cannot say the blonde one is not pretty to the eye."

Anthea snorted. "Everything isn't what it says on the tin," she muttered.

"What do you mean?" her sister-in-law inquired curiously.

The shuttle lifted off. Anthea ignored Kati's question, absently stroking her hand over Nolan's dark, silky hair as she watched the vessel containing her husband get smaller and smaller as it disappeared into the atmosphere.

* * *

The shuttle, dubbled _Galileo II_, settled on the shuttle bay floor and disgorged its occupants. Khan was the first of his crew to leave the shuttle, and he stood for a long moment, the others flowing around him, as he was dragged back through memory to the last time he'd been here.

He had surrendered on Qo'noS, so that Kirk and his crew would bring him here, aboard this ship, where his own people slumbered, encased in cryotubes that had held them for centuries, within torpedoes that Alexander Marcus had forced him to design.

The ship had not changed, to his eye. It had undergone repairs, certainly, after all the damage dealt to it by the _USS Vengeance_, first at Marcus's hand, then at his own. But it was still the same ship, still evoked the same vague sense of panic that even now ghosted along his nerves.

He had more control now than he had then. He'd been a prisoner before, sacrificing his freedom temporarily to be near his crew. Now, he was on more even footing with Kirk, and he had his own men with him.

And yet, he could not help a small frisson of fear brought on by the sense of deja vu that standing here inspired.

"Khan?"

He turned cold eyes to Kirk. "My men will need quarters, as long as we are here. Something a little more comfortable than the accomodations you afforded me on my last visit."

"Yeah," Kirk drawled, "the brig isn't meant to be comfortable. Lieutenant, show our guests to their quarters on deck eighteen."

The captain pushed past Khan, issuing orders to his crew. The lieutenant Kirk had addressed, one of the security officers, was a dark-skinned man with a thick mane of black, coarsely-textured hair, heavy brows, and strangely flat teeth. He gestured for Khan and his crew to follow him.

Each cabin had two beds, and a bathroom joined every two rooms. Khan had his own quarters, both as the uneven remainder and as the leader of the group. He didn't miss that there were extra security officers posted near their assigned lodging. It amused him that Kirk thought the additional officers posed any sort of threat to Khan and his people.

Once the men were settled, Khan went up to the bridge to join Kirk. It was the first time he'd been to the lauded and holy command deck. The blinding white of the environment was irritating. He much preferred the bridge of the Vengeance, but that ship was long-since scrap: piece-mealed, Anthea had told him, to repair the very city it had devastated.

He kept his opinion to himself, however, as he stood one step down from the captain's chair, behind the navigation station, hands at his sides.

"We were headed to the Brinthini system next, anyway," Kirk remarked as he settled into his chair. "If we hadn't detoured and come across you guys, I can't imagine what would have happened if we'd be there, unprepared, when the Klingons attacked."

"Died," Khan said flatly.

"Huh?"

"You would have died, Captain. I do not say this derogatorily. It is a statement of fact, Kirk. You and any you had taken to the surface would have been slaughtered at the hands of the Klingons. That is why you need me, is it not?"

Kirk opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. "Right. So. Sulu, how far are we from Brinthini?"

"Uh . . . Hour and a half at warp eight, Captain."

"See if you can push it to warp nine," Kirk said. "Scotty says the core can do that."

"Yes, sir."

Khan arched a brow at Kirk. "Cannibalized the _Vengeance_, did we?"

"Made a few improvements with some spare parts _someone_ left lying around," Kirk shot back.

At his station, Sulu snickered.

Grudgingly, Khan thought, _Score one for Kirk._

* * *

It didn't take long to reach Brinthini. When the _Enterprise_ arrived, they found a Bird of Prey still in orbit, indicating the Klingons remained on the planet. As they prepared to head to the surface, Kirk paused in strapping on a bit of body armour, confiscated from some smugglers a while back.

"You seem to be disturbed by something, Captain," Khan said. His own "preparation" consisted of strapping on an extra phaser he accepted from one of the security officers currently passing the weapons out.

Kirk looked at his hands. "What did you do to me?"

"Pardon?"

"Your blood. When they gave it to me, to revive me, it . . . did something to me. Changed me."

Khan's pale eyes crinkled at the corners, but his expression didn't change otherwise. "I would imagine that your senses have improved and your thought processes are faster, as well? Interesting. I wonder if the effect is more potent with blood straight from the source, rather than a derived serum?"

The captain stared at him. "I knew you were a cold-hearted bastard, but-"

"Did you _really_ expect me to have sympathy for you, Captain?" Khan gave him a humourless smile. "After everything, you honestly thought that I would _care_?"

"You seem to care a lot for your family."

Khan's eyes narrowed dangerously. "My family is of no concern to you, Kirk."

The captain pointedly rubbed the bruise around his throat. "Yeah, you made that pretty clear."

"Then let us make another thing clear, Captain. You may have had my blood taken from me to revive you. That does not make us kin or any kind of relation to each other, no matter the changes my DNA may have made to yours. The only reason I am helping you now is because I saw a chance to gain leverage. A favour for a favour, if you will. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I have no sympathy for the people of this planet we are going so gallantly to rescue. They are of no real concern to me."

Kirk leaned against the railing. "Uh-huh. And what would Anthea have said if you'd elected to ignore the attack?"

Khan smirked. "You do not know my wife as well as you think you do, Captain. One night with her did not make you an expert, and it certainly did not win you her allegiance. That has always been and shall always be _mine_. And if I . . . _elected_ to ignore this attack by the Klingons, she would have abided by it. Anthea is a practical woman, Kirk."

"Let's face it, Khan. You're not any happier that the Klingons are in this area than we are. They've gotta know, or at least suspect, about you, right? I mean, we told them John Harrison was wanted by Starfleet, and we hauled _you_ off after you took out their patrol. What'll happen if they find out who you are, what you did to them all by yourself? They probably won't take kindly to a guy like you kicking the shit out of them."

"There were no survivors, Kirk. How could they know it was me?" The dark-haired man clenched his hands unconsciously into fists at his sides.

"We're _assuming_ there were no survivors," Kirk responded. "We didn't stick around long enough to make sure. What if one did?"

That idea hadn't occured to Khan, and he didn't like it. It was further proof that he'd been off his game those few weeks. If he'd been thinking clearly, he would have made certain they were all dead before approaching Kirk to surrender.

He watched the security officers as they left, then turned to his men. "We hunt Klingons, not the Brinthi. Brinthini's people are tall, slender, pale, with blonde hair, purple eyes, and webbed hands and feet. Klingons are large, with dark skin, usually dark eyes but sometimes blue. Most possess central forehead ridges extending from the bridge of the nose, but not all. They also have sharp teeth. Most have dark hair, though some shave their heads, including eyebrows.

"They will be wearing armour, including helmets. Weak points are at armour joints and the sides of the ribcage. Do not aim straight for center of mass as they protect this area with plate metal, and phasers will not work. If you can confiscate any blades, including their curved bat'leth, do so. They may have their own phasers, but they prefer hand-to-hand combat. Leave no survivors."

His men saluted and separated to the two shuttlecraft they'd been assigned.

"My duty is to protect the Brinthi," Kirk said to Khan. "Your men won't do anything to _them_, will they?"

Khan smirked. "No, Captain. The Brinthi are safe in my men's hands, I assure you."

He ducked into one of the shuttles, to pilot the vessel himself. Kirk, with the contingent from the _Enterprise_, went for the third shuttle.

* * *

A figure separated itself from the shadows in the shuttle bay, watching the three shuttlecraft as they went out through the airlock.

So this Khan was the man they hunted? How very interesting! It made so much sense now, why Marcus had never responded. Why the plan had failed.

And if he had special abilities, all the better. The Klingon High Council would very interested to get their hands on him. But how? They could not take him from this vessel, so how to lure him away?

The spy mentally reviewed the conversation he'd overheard. This Khan had a wife and son, back on the planet they had just left. Family was important to him, both men had stated that several times.

Grinning wickedly to himself, the spy pulled out his communicator.


	13. Chapter Twelve

**-Chapter Twelve-**

Khan's absence unsettled Anthea. Funny how quickly she'd re-acclimated to his being there constantly. She was anxious with him gone, her palms sweaty, reminded too much of all those months when she'd woken alone, the bed beside her cold and empty, her life one big confusing mess of grief and anger.

To keep busy and her mind off of it, she spent the afternoon digging through the bolts and boxes of fabric she'd brought from Earth, choosing ones for her new curtains and other things around the cabin. She didn't have a sofa or any armchairs, which distressed her a little.

Kati, staying on the _Relianc_e so Yves could monitor her, found Anthea sitting on the floor of the cargo hold, a bolt of bland floral fabric across her lap, staring into space. Her sister-in-law lowered herself to sit beside her.

"His leaving distresses you," Kati said.

"Yes, it does. I can't help but remember . . . before." Anthea smoothed a wrinkle with the palm of her hand. "This fabric is so ugly, why did I buy it?"

"It is not so bad," the other woman said. "Perhaps someone else will like it?"

Anthea pushed the bolt off her lap and grabbed another out of the pile on her other side. This one was bolder, the flowers more abstract, the colours brighter. "This is better, I think."

"He will return."

"I know. I tell myself that." She flattened her hands over the airy material. "I'm not any good at sewing."

She began to cry, and Kati rose on her knees, leaning over the discarded bolt to hug her. "I can teach you! Please, do not cry!"

Anthea huffed a teary laugh. "No, no, it's- I feel like my emotions are on a trampoline. You ever play with one of those?"

Kati shook her head, as she sat back on her heels.

"It's a big, black canvas made of . . . plastic of some sort, attached to this frame with big springs, and you jump around on it. They're stupidly dangerous, I don't have any idea why they still make them in this day and age. Mum and Dad wouldn't let me get one, but my best friend, Lindy . . ." Anthea trailed off, distracted for a moment by the thought of her friend. "Lindy had one. We'd play on it every time I went over. It was the closest I'd been to flying."

"So why do you cry?"

Anthea shook her head, wiping at the tears on her cheeks. "I don't know why, really. I mean . . . I do, but . . ."

She sighed. "I'm pregnant. Again. Khan and I wanted to wait 'til the first trimester was past to tell anyone, but . . . you're family, I can tell you. And Yves knows, so . . . I forgot what a wreck pregnancy makes me. I'm terrified he won't come back and I'll have to do it all alone again."

"No, you are not alone!" Kati assured her. "But he will be back!"

"I know I'm being silly," Anthea whispered. "It's only . . . I have this sick feeling in my gut that something bad will happen."

"It will not. Come. I will show you how to sew curtains."

Anthea let Kati draw her to her feet, forcing a smile. Khan would be back, and everything would be okay again.

It had to be.

* * *

The shuttles from the _Enterprise_ had minimal armaments, so they had to pilot carefully to avoid attracting the attention of the Klingons. It wasn't difficult to locate the primary attack site; the invaders had set fire to the city.

As he set the shuttle down, Khan reviewed what he knew of the Brinthi. They were space-faring, barely, having successfully colonised one of their neighbouring planets, and the Vulcans had made first contact. He presumed the _Enterprise_ was there to make an official contact for the Federation, which really didn't bode well for them staying out of his people's business. He didn't blame Anthea; how was she to know that the Federation would make a second pass by this area so quickly?

"This is exciting!" Joachim said, from where he was seated nearby. "I've never been to another planet!"

"Yes, you have," Inigo said, from further back in the shuttle. "Sitara is not Earth."

"I mean, I haven't _consciously_ travelled to and landed on another planet," the youngest Augment replied.

Khan glanced over at Joachim. He'd been seventeen when they'd left Earth, in 1998. Barely eighteen now, not counting the two centuries they'd spent sleeping, he was eager and brash. He was going to have to do something about the boy, curb that impulsiveness somehow.

"Standard rules of combat," he said, as he stood from the pilot's seat. "Hopefully, the Brinthi won't see us as an additional threat. If one attacks, neutralise but do not kill unless absolutely necessary. And do not engage them more than required. Let's leave that to Starfleet."

"Khan, why are we _here_?" Joachim asked.

"Because otherwise, Captain Kirk will not leave us in peace."

"We could take the _Enterprise_!"

Khan cut him a steely-eyed look. "Absolutely not. Do not forget your place, Joachim."

Joachim turned his gaze down. "Yes, Khan."

Admittedly, the idea _had_ occured to Khan, but that would have been a huge mistake. Even if he'd successfully taken the ship, it would have ensured Starfleet would come after them, just as Kirk's death would have. There were times when he was immensely grateful for Anthea's cool voice of reason opposing his own arrogance and hotheadedness.

They filed out of the shuttle and joined with the rest of his men and those from the _Enterprise_.

"_Enterprise_ is supposed to be hailing the Brinthi," Kirk said once they'd all gathered, "to let them know we're on our way."

"That will destroy any chance we had at the element of surprise," Khan put in. "But then, if that Bird of Prey up there saw your ship, that was gone, anyway."

Kirk narrowed his eyes at Khan, but didn't respond to that. "_Enterprise_ team, we're mostly gonna be support for Khan's people. Much as I hate to say it, shoot to kill the Klingons. They won't grant mercy."

"No," Khan confirmed, "they will not. They have little concept of it. This will likely work better if your people concentrate on assisting any surviving Brinthi. Defense, rather than offense."

"Good idea."

Khan gestured to his men, dividing them into four groups of five. They hadn't forgotten a bit of their previous training, and he drilled them regularly, so all it took for them to divide ranks was a hand motion.

Kirk had to admit, he was a little impressed.

"We are on the north-western edge of the city, and face south-east," Khan said. "Inigo, take your people in to the south. Wallace, you're east. Vladimir, west. I will take the north way."

Turning to Kirk, he said, "Do you wish to divide your force and send some along with each of my groups, or follow as a whole?"

"Divide _and_ follow," Kirk replied. "We're gonna leave most of the fighting to you guys. We don't know how many Klingons there are down here, and we're not precisely a military force."

The two leaders stared at each other, silently acknowledging that if Khan hadn't stopped Marcus, that might have been very different.

Khan gave a sharp nod. "Let's move."

* * *

Kirk and his men weren't trained fighters. Sure, they received basic combat training at the Academy, just in case things ever went south, but most Starfleet officers eventually forgot it and got complacent. He hated admitting that. Part of him could see Admiral Marcus's point; Starfleet wasn't prepared for open war. That didn't mean he'd agree with the man's methods.

He'd sent half his men with the group entering from the south, and followed Khan himself, wanting to keep an eye on the other man. With phaser ready and set to kill, he and his own team crept along behind Khan's men, watching for any Klingons that might attack.

A few minutes after they entered the city proper, they found a small group of Brinthi that sought to escape. Kirk sent two of his men to escort the cluster of terrified people to safety.

"Targets ahead," Khan said. "At two o'clock, in the second structure to the right."

"How can you know that?" Kirk asked.

"My hearing, Captain, is better than yours, remember?"

Kirk grimaced, a flash of memory going through his head. Khan's fist flying at him, the crack of bone as his cheek shattered. "Yeah, I remember."

Ignoring Kirk's obvious discomfort, Khan turned to the small party with them. "Neutralise as quickly as possible. Do not waste time attempting to take prisoners for interrogation. I don't care why they're here. If there are survivors left over, then we'll deal with it."

Kirk stared at the dark-haired man, wondering what it was that had made the man so damned ruthless, and yet able to care so completely for his people.

They headed for the building. As they got closer, Kirk could pick up with sounds of Klingon speech and laughter. There wasn't much need for stealth, given how loud their targets were.

Khan gestured to one of the men and the pair silently stepped up to the back door. The Brinthi didn't have sliding doors like Starfleet; Khan counted silently with one hand, then kicked the door in and went in low, with his backup taking the high position.

There were four Klingons in the main room of the building, which seemed to be a two-story house. They were playing some sort of card game when the humans burst in, looking a little dumbfounded for several seconds at the interruption.

Those seconds cost them everything. Khan shot the first two, grabbed the blade of the first, threw it and impaled the third Klingon through the face. By that time, his partner had taken out the fourth and was headed for the stairs.

On the second floor, they found a dead Brinthi couple and a wailing baby, a Klingon sleeping in the bed he'd shoved the corpses of his victims out of. It disgusted Khan, but he gave no sign of it.

His partner, Gustav, calmly stepped over the bodies and without a word, slit the Klingon's throat.

Out of instinct brought to surface through nights spent up with his son, Khan scooped the baby up, and cradled it to his chest.

"Clear the house," he said.

"What are we doing with the child?"

"We'll find someone to take it. I'm not leaving it here to die."

They went back downstairs, where Kirk and his men had joined them.

Kirk blinked at the sight of Khan holding the child. "Uh."

"We need to find a caretaker for the child," Khan said. "For the present, the most qualified is myself. Unless anyone else here is a father?"

Everyone else present shook their heads.

"Good. Then be quiet, and let us continue."

Kirk was, admittedly, amused by the image of Khan with the baby, but he couldn't laugh, seeing the destruction around them.

He sighed. It was going to be a very long night.


	14. Chapter Thirteen

**-Chapter Thirteen-**

One of Kirk's men watched the baby while the rest of them cleared out the fifty or so Klingons in the city. Taking them out wasn't the issue; hunting them down and getting to them _was_. It took all night, and by very early morning, Khan was exhausted. It had taxed even he, and he'd been up nearly three days by that point, anyway.

All he wanted to do, all he could think about, was getting home to his wife and sleeping for a good eighteen hours. Hell, he'd even settle for two hours.

To Khan, destruction needed to serve a purpose. "Because it was there" wasn't a good enough reason to do this much damage to a civilisation, especially one as pacifistic as the Brinthi. He didn't understand how the Klingons could justify attacking others just because they _could_.

"It makes you think, no?" Inigo murmured, as they watched the Brinthi shuffle back into their retaken city.

"About what?"

The Spaniard shrugged. "I remember, on Earth, at the end of the wars. We sit back and think, 'Why did they do this?' More land? Dominance? You ruled a quarter of the planet, Khan, and you did not do it this way. You can be a hard man, surely, but you are not cruel like this. I have not seen this kind of cruel since Russia, and their raids on central Europe. You took Russia and stopped this senseless mess."

Khan turned slightly, to look at Inigo. "I was just now thinking of that time."

"It is impossible not to be reminded," Inigo replied. "These people, they are weak as France was, weak as my own people were when Germany took them again. If I may be honest, Khan?"

"Always, Inigo."

"I am glad we have Sitara. A place of our own. We all want the same thing in our new home: peace, and to prosper. To be our own people. Earth, it was too . . . political. Everyone out for themselves. Even this Starfleet? I do not like this Starfleet. They think they are better than everyone, no? So educated, so mighty. It is good they helped these people, but look where their enlightenment has got them. We do their dirty work, they take the credit."

Khan huffed a laugh. "If only you knew, Inigo, just how true that is."

"So, we go home now?"

"As soon as the illustrious and dashing Captain Kirk is finished, yes."

* * *

The Brinthi, it turned out, had one particular cultural quirk that managed to irritate both Kirk and Khan: no one would take the baby Khan had rescued. Orphans were apparently shunned, which seemed to both men to be completely ridiculous. The Brinti had no orphanages. Single parents were expected to re-marry immediately, in an arranged marriage set up by the city council, after the loss of a spouse. Divorce was unheard of.

"And these people are advanced enough to have warp drives?" Kirk asked incredulously. "What the _hell_?"

Khan held the crying child against his shoulder. It was a boy, and not more than a few months old. "I cannot imagine leaving a child to die simply because its parents are also dead. How is that conducive to a thriving culture?"

McCoy, come down in another shuttle, approached with his medical bag. "What's going on?" he asked.

"The Brinthi have abjured the baby," Kirk said. "Khan rescued it from some Klingons that killed its parents, and no one will even _look_ at the poor kid. And as long as we've got the baby with us, no one will talk to us, so I can't figure out why. I was wondering if you'd look the baby over, see if there's some biological reason they're willing to let him die? I'm going to go talk to those people over there and see what the hell is going on."

"Sure, Jim. May I?" Bones asked Khan.

Khan gingerly handed the child over. Despite his rather abrupt entry into fatherhood, he'd adapted quickly as he did to just about all things. He was protective of this little one almost as much as he was over Nolan.

McCoy examined the baby, holding him just as carefully as Khan had. "Definitely a boy," he said to himself. "Good, healthy set of lungs. I don't know much about the Brinthi, but he seems strong enough for a baby his size and approximate age. Have the people said _anything_ about him?"

Khan reached out, brushed a finger over the baby's white-blonde, wispy hair. "Other than that he is twelve weeks old and that they will not take him, no. The woman we spoke to told us his age. Her spouse dragged her away and would not let her tell us anything further."

The doctor muttered something unflattering under his breath. "What kind of people does that to a kid, huh?"

"One my people will _not_ be doing business with," Khan said fiercely.

Kirk came back, looking disgusted. "Okay. So here's the deal. According to their religion, if a kids loses his or her parents at the same time, the kid is cursed and will bring doom on anyone who helps them. Given that these people are pretty pacifistic, I'm gonna hazard a guess and say that the only time that kind of thing happens is when families get sick. You'd think they'd know about illnesses and how they work, but . . . I dunno. I was told flat-out that no one will take him, even the mom's parents who live about a mile away."

"Dammit, Jim, that's the stupidest-"

Kirk held up a hand. "Yeah. I know. I already said as much to those people over there. They also have absolutely no interest in the Federation, and while they're grateful we helped them, they want us to go away. We're outsiders."

"We will take the child," Khan heard himself say.

McCoy and Kirk both turned to look at him with surprise.

"Say again?" This from Kirk.

"My people. We will take the child."

"Doesn't that go against your philosophy?" Bones asked him.

Khan shrugged, taking the baby back from the doctor. "I find my philosophy is evolving. My lieutenant and his partner would like a child. As they are both male, they cannot have one of their own. I believe Otto would be more than happy to adopt this boy."

* * *

The cabin was _almost_ ready to move into. Anthea looked forward to when Khan set up their bed and she could sleep on a real mattress, one with plenty of room to stretch out on.

Since the cabin was still a bit dirty, Anthea dressed in boots, trousers, and one of Khan's Starfleet shirts, which she'd taken to sleeping in sometimes while he'd been missing.

She carried Nolan inside and set him on the floor in the living room, on the rug she'd brought from Earth. She hadn't brought all of her possessions, but there were a few she hadn't been able to part with; she was lucky in that she had been able to bring parts of her old life with her when coming here. Khan's crew had lost everything when they'd fled Earth two centuries before.

Measuring tool in hand, she began taking notes for making the window coverings. The frames didn't have glass; instead, there were shutters they could close, on the inside of the window. Still, she wanted curtains, to provide cover while still letting the breeze in.

She ran a hand over her stomach, smiling to herself. They still had several months, but it wouldn't be long, really, 'til their child was here. Khan was planning to build Nolan a bed of his own, so that they could use his crib for the new baby.

"Good thing I brought your baby clothes with me, even if they're all for a boy," she told Nolan over her shoulder. "I doubt anyone here will have a problem with me dressing a girl in anything covered with blue teddy bears, right?"

There was a footfall at the door, and Nolan yelped, "Mama!"

She turned. Two hulking forms had entered through the open doorway, both in leather-and-metal armour. It took her one heart-stopping second to realise what they were.

Klingons.

Anthea dropped the measuring tape and dove for Nolan, but one of the Klingons got there first. He lifted her little boy in one metal-plated fist.

It had been close to three years since her hand-to-hand combat lessons, when Khan had been going by John Harrison. She hadn't practised since getting pregnant, hadn't needed it. Still, some of it lingered in her memory.

She changed direction and grabbed the machete Khan had left on the table, from when he'd been stripping saplings to make curtain rods for her. Anthea caught up the blade and went for the nearer Klingon as he reached for her. Desperation drove her to move faster than she had in her life. She ducked under his outstretched arm and slashed the blade across his midsection, just as Khan had taught her. It had been an idle thing, his telling her where the Klingons' weak points were in their armour.

The leather parted under the wickedly-sharp blade, and she drove the rounded end as hard as she could into the exposed flesh beneath. The Klingon made an "Urk!" sound. Anthea twisted the machete and shoved hard upwards, driving it towards his heart.

He dropped to the floor with a thud.

She turned to the other Klingon, who looked a little surprised that she'd just killed his companion.

"Give me my son!" she hissed.

He responded in Klingon, which she didn't speak, and gave her son a shake with his large fist. Enraged, Anthea rushed him, throwing her weight into him. She wasn't heavy, but her momentum knocked him off-balance, and his lost his grip on Nolan. Heart pounding, she caught her little boy and dropped to the floor, rolling between the Klingon's widely braced legs.

She scrambled to her feet, a startled-into-silence Nolan still tight in her arms. Anthea hit the front door at a dead run.

Just outside, she ran into a familiar figure, somewhat literally.

"Help!" she said. "Klingons!"

"I know," the figure said, and grinned.

Then he raised his fist, and swung it at her face.


	15. Chapter Fourteen

**-Chapter Fourteen-**

_Sitara_

The _Enterprise_'s shuttles landed just outside the settlement proper and disgorged their occupants. Kirk had come down to the surface, wanting to make sure that the Brinthi child was seen to. He didn't _doubt_ Khan, he'd seen the guy with his own kid. It was just . . . the injustice of the whole thing.

Everything was sleepy at this early hour, rather eerily quiet without the sounds of construction. It was only a little past dawn, and Khan wanted to crawl in bed beside his wife. With the Brinthi baby in hand, he walked through the town square, towards Otto and Chin's cabin. As he passed the armaments cache, he noticed that several of the spears they'd fashioned were gone, as were some of the phaser rifles. That meant that some of the men-and likely women-had gone hunting.

He knocked at the door of Otto's cabin, the infant snuffling against his shoulder. There was no answer, even after a second knock. A peek inside told him that both Otto and Chin had likely gone with the hunting party.

Khan sighed and turned, headed towards the _Reliance_. Anthea, he was sure, would be willing to look after the child until he had a chance to speak to Otto.

He had to pass their under-construction cabin on the way to the ship. The first sign something was amiss was the bright blue strip of material lying on the ground just outside their new house. Khan nudged it with a booted toe, wondering what it was.

It clicked a moment later that it was the "leash" from Nolan's silly harness. It seemed to have been ripped right off.

Khan looked to the door, saw it was slightly ajar. The construction wasn't quite finished yet; Anthea had been talking about measurements for curtains on the windows before he left, and the measuring tape lay just inside the door, bent and crumpled.

Just beyond that, a Klingon lay in a pool of blood, Khan's machete buried in his chest. The corpse looked vaguely surprised.

"Anthea?" he called. "Anthea!"

There was no answer. Heart pounding, he vaulted over the body and hurried searched the other rooms. There were scuff-marks in the construction dust, and Nolan's teddy bear lay facedown on the floor near the Klingon.

He went cold, head to toe, and then hot a second later. Khan snatched the toy off the floor and stormed out of the house, making for the Reliance at a dead run, the new child held tight to his chest. If she was in danger, Anthea would hide aboard the ship, lock herself in with the baby. If she could get there, that was.

Kirk sprinted over from the shuttle as Khan opened the main hatch of the ship. "What's up?"

"Anthea is missing, and there is a dead Klingon in our house," Khan told him. "I need to see if she is aboard the ship, it's the safest place."

He went and pounded on Yves's cabin door, waking the doctor from a sound slumber. After the doctor put the Brinthi baby in the medbay, the three of them searched every nook and cranny of the starship.

Anthea was not there, and neither was Nolan.

Khan stood in the hold, the last place they'd checked, and felt a fear greater than anything he'd ever experienced well up from his gut. When he turned to the Starfleet captain, there was genuine, undisguised anguish in his eyes. "Anthea is gone. And my son. They have taken them, Kirk. They have taken my family."

* * *

The hunting party returned not long after, to find the entire village in an uproar. Khan had gone door to door and woken every resident, accounting for everyone and demanding to know when they had last seen his wife and son.

Khan's lieutenant expressed horror and remorse at Anthea's disappearance. "If I had suspected, Kaiser, I would not have left!"

"There was no way to know," Chin pointed out. "Khan, what can we do?"

Their leader shook his head and turned in a circle, taking in the village with a bleak expression. He and his council had gathered, with the Starfleet officers presently in their midst, at the "war table".

Kati had found the Brinthi child in the medbay and unofficially adopted him. She paced near where Khan stood, worry creasing her brow, with the little blonde head against her shoulder.

Khan watched her, thinking that he'd intended the child for Otto and Chin, but if Kati wanted him, he had no argument with it. Part of him wished they'd just left the infant on Brinthini and come straight back here. If they hadn't wasted time, he would have _been_ here, and Anthea and Nolan would not be missing!

The stupidest thing anyone anywhere in the galaxy could do would be to get between Khan Noonien Singh and his family. Admiral Alexander Marcus had learned that the hard way. The Klingons were about to learn an even more devastating lesson, for not only had they dared interfere with his family, they had taken his _son_. He worried for Anthea, the feeling an uncomfortable but not entirely unfamiliar knot in his gut, but it was the thought of Nolan that drove him into a fury hotter than any he had ever known.

The notion that someone had taken his helpless little boy, could hurt his precious son, made Khan angrier than anything he had ever felt. He had trained Anthea in hand-to-hand combat himself, though he was sure it had been a while since she'd used any of it. Still, she could put up a fight, had obviously done so when she'd slain the Klingon they had dragged out of the house and examined. Nolan could not defend himself.

He didn't even want to contemplate the child Anthea carried.

"It looks to me, Khan, they wait 'til we leave for the hunt," Otto told his deathly-silent leader. "Then they go in and take her, and the boy."

Khan lifted icy blue eyes to his right-hand man. "And no one stayed to guard them?"

"We did not hear a thing," Kati reminded her brother. "How could we know there was danger?"

His sister gently rubbed the baby's back. "She told me last night she intended to get an early start on the measurements, and on making the curtains. She said . . . she wanted to make them herself so that she could put something she made in the house."

Kirk braced his hands on the table. "I wouldn't think Klingons could be very sneaky, but it really wouldn't take more than two or three at most to grab Anthea and the kid. She's not as strong as you guys, and she's pretty small. Skinny. She wouldn't be able to fend off one of those Klingons for long, and . . . Well."

"I am aware my wife is not combat-trained," Khan snapped. "I have done what I can, but if you will recall, I was _frozen_ for two years."

He turned to Otto. "Surely you left someone in charge while you went hunting?"

"Uh . . . Rodriguez."

His blood went cold. Without a word, Khan turned and stalked through the village, to where Rodriguez worked outside his cabin. Kirk and Otto followed close on his heels.

Khan kicked aside the worktable, hauled Rodriguez up by his collar, and slammed him against the side of the small house.

"You let them take her, didn't you?"

Rodriguez had never been very good at maskin his expressions, and in the space of three heartbeats, went from surprise, to fear, and then to resignation.

"There were too many! I heard her call out, but when I went to see, there were too many. I couldn't fight them all alone!"

"How many?" Khan demanded.

The man hesitated. "Six!"

"Bullshit," Kirk snapped. "Khan here took out a patrol group of thirty Klingons."

"But I am not Khan." Rodriguez kicked his feet, but they weren't anywhere near the ground. "I am not so good a fighter. My training was not complete!"

"So you sat back and did nothing, didn't alert the others?"

"They are women-"

Khan shook Rodriguez and pounded him against the wall. "They are still soldiers!"

Rodriguez held up his hands. "Please, Khan, I did not know what else to do! They told me they wanted her, I . . . showed them where to find her. That is all. I know nothing more!"

His leader's ice-blue eyes fixed on his raised hand. Purple bruises spread across his knuckles, along with bite marks puncturing the skin there. They weren't shaped right for a Klingon, as Klingons had fangs. Most, anyway. Too large to be a child's, too small to be a man's, they could only have belonged to Anthea.

Khan grabbed Rodriguez's hand, lifted it to get a better look. Then he turned his gaze to his crewman. "Would you like to explain these injuries? It looks as if Anthea bit you. Did you strike her?"

The shorter man wouldn't meet his gaze, which was, as far as Khan was concerned, as good as an admission.

"You _helped_ them take her," Khan stated flatly. "You betrayed as and you helped the Klingons take my wife and my children. I _told_ you to stay away from her and stop giving her trouble. I _told_ you what the punishment would be for betrayal. You know what you're forcing me to do, Rodriguez."

"So what if I did? Better this than to live with _her_ as my queen!" Rodriguez snarled. He turned his head and spit, then grinned. "They want the weak, human bitch, they can have her! And her halfbreed child!"

It took every ounce of Khan's control not to rip Rodriguez's head from his shoulders. He lowered the man until his feet touched the ground. Still with a firm grip on the man, he looked to Kirk, Otto, and the gathering crowd, then dragged him out to the "village square". He wanted to tear Rodriguez to pieces, rend him limb from limb while he screamed, but his people had laws, ones he himself had put into place, and as much as it pained him, there was something of a process required.

If he'd known that one day he would be punishing a man who had taken his wife from him, he'd have written in a clause letting him shred the man's skin off with his fingers. He'd amend it later.

"You are witnesses!" Khan shouted. "He has given his confession. He helped the Klingons take Anthea. He attacked her, he hurt her, and he gave her and my son to the enemy!"

A shocked murmur ran through the crowd. Rodriguez had the temerity to _smile_. Watching him, Kirk wondered if the man was intent on suicide-by-crazy-dictator.

"Wait," the Starfleet captain said. "He may have information."

Khan turned cold eyes to Kirk. "And how do you suggest I extract it?"

"Spock, he's a Vulcan. They can do this mind-meld thing-"

"I am aware," Khan interrupted harshly, remembering when the Vulcan tried on him. "It does not work on us."

"Oh."

Khan dug his fingers into Rodriguez's arm. "Tell me everything you know, and I will make it swift."

"I told you everything," the condemned man replied. "They came, they said they wanted her. I showed them where. When she tried to run, I stopped her. They took her. I do not know where, and I do not care. Kill me if you wish, Khan. I have lived by my ideals."

Unable to hold in his rage, Khan wrenched Rodriguez's arm, dislocating it from the shoulder and shattering radius and ulna in one vicious twist. Rodriguez screamed, legs buckling.

Khan fisted his hand over Rodriguez's short ponytail and shook him, nearly blinded by his fury. "You know what the punishment is for betrayal of our people! You all swore to abide by my laws when you joined me. Those are our laws still, though we do not live on that old world anymore."

Now, all of his people were deathly silent, waiting. They knew, though Kirk did not, what was coming. They'd seen much of what Kirk had only glimpsed.

"We have no hood, Kaiser," Otto told his leader.

"No need. This will be much swifter than he deserves," Khan said, and he turned his prisoner to face him. "Only because I do not have the time to further waste on this _bakrichod_."

And he snapped Rodriguez's neck.

Kirk was the only one who reacted at the crack of bone and sinew, his stomach lurching. He made a small sound and a furtive motion forward, but it was already done.

Khan let the body fall to the ground.

"Inigo, Joachim, take the body to the quarry. Dismember it and burn it. Burn it to ash. I don't want to run the risk of some genetic fiddling bringing him back to life. Though, if it does, I'll kill him again. Slower this time."

"Yes, Khan," Inigo said, and saluted.

Joachim hurried over, and the two men dragged the corpse away.


	16. Chapter Fifteen

**-Chapter Fifteen-**

Kirk remained silent until the men hauling the body away were out of sight. "You killed him. Just like that. One of the guys you were gonna kill _me _over."

Khan was looking over, eyes unfocused, towards his home, from whence his family had disappeared. "I _told_ them that if any of them laid a hand on Anthea, I would kill them. He thought marrying her had softened me enough that I would not do it. He hurt her, Kirk, gave her to the Klingons, and then he lied to me. He knew that was punishable by death, and he did it anyway."

He flexed his hands. "I needed to make an example of him. I am still Khan, and this is still _my_ world. It is simply . . . smaller."

Kirk had a difficult time finding the words to voice the tumult in his head. "Doesn't it upset you, though, to kill one of your own?"

"Would it upset you, Kirk, if you were forced to execute one of _your_ crew?"

"I wouldn't do it," Kirk insisted. "I'd court-martial them and exile them, or I'd lock them in the brig until I could take them back to Earth to stand trial."

Khan's blue eyes shifted, at last, to Kirk. There was no mockery in his voice, only a vague tinge of the pity of one who had seen horrors, and knew how naive Kirk truly was. "You say that, and I know you _believe_ that, but there may come a day when you are forced to do it, to take the life of one of your crew for the safety of others. _Then_ you will know how I feel."

The captain shook his head. "I still don't see how you could just . . . kill him, with no trial or anything."

"He knew my law, knew I would follow through. Or, perhaps, he was testing me, thinking me weak. We come from a savage time, Captain Kirk. We do not keep ourselves neatly ordered with regulations and protocols and uniforms. They lived with me before our exile. My people know my rule is absolute."

"So, what, they behave themselves and you don't kill them and you give them treats to stroke your ego?"

Khan snorted. "Hardly, Kirk. Otto usually handles the executions, though we haven't had one in centuries. I look after my people. You see these homes? I made certain I had personally worked on constructing each, that everyone here had a roof over their head, until I began construction of my own."

He turned and walked back towards the war table, sheltered from the sun by a tent-turned canopy. Kirk trailed behind, lost in his thoughts.

"You said he helped the Klingons take Anthea and your children," Kirk began.

Khan flattened his hands on the rough-hewn wooden surface, an involuntary spasm wracking him head to toe at the reminder. He was losing control; he didn't like it, didn't know how long he had until he completely snapped. Killing Rodriguez had not been enough to get a grip on his emotions. "Ironic that _you_ should be the first I tell," he said after a moment or two. He sighed heavily.

"Anthea's pregnant," he confided at last. "Roughly nine weeks. We do not yet know the gender, but we are hoping for a girl."

He glanced up at Kirk. "I'm not certain why I told you that."

The younger man brushed his knuckles over the table top. "Because you're human?"

"At times, I have my doubts," Khan murmured to himself.

Kirk eyed the man before him, suddenly seeing not the driven warrior or the homicidal dictator, but a husband and father who faced losing what mattered most to him. He didn't understand the devotion Khan had to his people, not _quite_. But then, he thought of Carol. Of Spock, Bones, Uhura, Scotty. Even Sulu and Chekov. Yeah, scratch that, he got it.

"Look. You and I have our differences. We've tried to kill each other, but let's look beyond that. That deal we made stands. You helped us out on Brinthini, and I'm not gonna go back on what I said."

Khan turned slightly, watching Kirk through a dark fringe that fell in his eyes. "I sense a 'but' coming, Captain."

"Far as I'm concerned, Anthea is . . . Okay, not a friend, but a colleague. There's no way I can go on my way and leave you to find her by yourself. And the thought of your kid in their hands makes me sick to my stomach." It did. Kirk had to swallow past the nausea at the thought of that bright-eyed little boy at the mercy of the Klingons, had to fight just to speak. He couldn't imagine how _Khan_ felt. "So we'll help you find her. Me, my crew and my ship. And when we've got them back, I'll drop you back off here and let you go about your business, just like we agreed."

It pained Khan to admit he needed outside assistance, but in this case, he couldn't do it alone. He had no idea where to look, outside of knowing the Klingons had her. But why?

"Rodriguez said that they came looking specifically for my wife," he said aloud. "They knew she was here, and they wanted _her_, no one else."

"He lied about the number of Klingons," Otto intoned. "There are only tracks for two."

"I know," Khan said. "So they came for her and my son. It could not have been for Brinthini. We assisted you, but that was a Starfleet operation. This was retaliation for something."

Nearby, there was a bright light, in a column shape, and a high, almost chiming sound. When the light faded, Commander Spock stood where it had been. Khan's men gaped, still not used to transporter technology.

"Spock," Kirk said. "I'm glad you're here. We've got a problem."

"Given that you did not immediately return to the ship, that was my conclusion as well," the Vulcan said. He took in the motley gathering. "I came to see if I may be of assistance. Please elucidate, Captain."

"Okay, here's the short version: While we were on Brinthini, some Klingons came _here_ and kidnapped Khan's wife and kid. One of Khan's men helped them grab her, but he's dead."

Spock arched one already winged brow. "I presume you have offered our assistance in locating them?"

"It's the right thing to do," Kirk said defensively.

"I am not arguing. In fact, I agree." Spock turned to Khan. "My condolences."

Khan just stared at him.

"Do we know _why_ Lieutenant Commander Harrison and the child were taken?"

Kirk shook his head. "Nope. Just that the Klingons were here specifically for her, and there were two of 'em. I'm guessing that the one survivor-she managed to kill one of them-beamed with her and Nolan back to their ship."

The captain swore to himself. "How did we not know there were _two_ Birds of Prey in the area?"

"While it is apparently common for the smaller classes of ship to group on Qo'noS in a patrol party," Khan put in, "none of my reconnaisance while working for Starfleet indicating they do the same with the larger classes while away from their homeworld. It's behaviour I have not seen before."

The Vulcan watched him with those expressionless dark eyes, and it irritated him. "What?" Khan demanded.

"It would seem that the Klingons sought your wife in connection with _you_," Spock said. "But why?"

"_That_," Khan said, between gritted teeth, "is what we are trying to discern!"

Spock turned to Kirk. "Captain. You said yesterday that it was possible someone managed to survive when Khan took out the patrol in the Ketha province."

"Yeah," Kirk said slowly.

"Is it also possible, theorising that there was, indeed, a survivor, that the Klingons have managed to not only identify Khan as the party responsible for the patrol, but also to locate him?"

"Anything's possible, Spock," Kirk sighed. "Two years is a long time. But Khan and his people have only been here a couple months. What, four at the most?"

Khan nodded.

"Be a pretty big coincidence if they just happened to stumble across 'em like we did," Kirk continued.

"You believe that the Klingons on Brinthini contacted the Klingons in _this_ system?"

"Maybe. I dunno."

It was possible, yes. It was also possible they had a spy somewhere, though that thought gave Kirk the beginnings of a headache.

* * *

Her first conscious thought was that her head hurt. "Hurt" was actually an understatement. It felt heavy and lopsided, even lying as she was on something hard and cold, and the stabbing pain sliced through with every beat of her heart.

Anthea groaned, lifting a hand to press it to her forehead. She gasped when her fingers encountered a large, spongey lump. Her eyes snapped open and she hissed in pain, even the low light of the room too much for her.

Where was she? Not the _Reliance_, not the cabin. The floor under her was metal, unfamiliar. She sat up and the room seemed to bounce and sway. Anthea clapped both hands to her head and groaned.

"Mama?"

Nolan!

Anthea immediately pushed aside her own discomfort and squinted through the dim light to find her son. He sat not far away, his face streaked with tears and dirt.

"Oh, my baby!" She snatched him up, ignoring the way moving made her head pound, and clutched him close. "Are you alright, No?"

He burrowed against her and hiccuped, an indication he'd been crying. Poor thing, all by himself while she'd been unconscious! She peppered the top of his head with kisses.

"Mama, ow!"

"Where does it ow?" she asked, setting him back a little in her lap.

"No," he said. "_Mama_ ow!"

Nolan patted his own forehead.

She let out a shuddery breath. "Yeah," she whispered. "Mama has an ow, hasn't she?"

Gingerly, she reached up again, brushing her fingertips over the swelling on her forehead. Her memory was really fuzzy; she couldn't remember what had happened, how she'd come to be . . . wherever here was.

Nolan reached up and patted her cheek. "Grrr mens," he whispered. "Bad. Hurt Mama."

She caught his little hand, his fingers curling around her thumb. His simple words brough back flashes of . . . something. Fangs, harsh words-

The door to their cell banged open, and she didn't have to fight to remember anymore. A Klingon stood silhouetted in the doorway, the light blinding to Anthea's eyes. Instinctively, she shielded Nolan with her body.

"_yIQam_!"

She shrank back against the wall. "I don't understand! Please! What's going on?"

"_Mev ving_," he growled.

"I _don't speak Klingon_!" Anthea insisted. She really should have taken Khan up on his offer to teach her a few phrases, uncouth as she'd viewed it.

Another Klingon appeared and spoke to the first. The newcomer pushed past the first and came in, shining some hand-held light in her face.

"I speak English," he said roughly. "He said to get on your feet."

"I can't stand. I'm hurt."

The second Klingon grabbed her by the hair and wrenched her head so he could shine the light over her head wound. "_BaQa'_," he muttered. He barked something at the first Klingon, who nodded and left.

Anthea licked dry lips, leaning away from the light. "Please . . . why is this happening? Where are we?"

"You are aboard our ship, the mighty _Gr'oth_. I am Captain Koloth. You are wife to Khan, also called John Harrison?"

She wasn't sure if lying or telling the truth would have a worse outcome. Nervously, Anthea nodded. "I'm- I'm Anthea Harrison."

Furiously, she tried to think of why the Klingons wanted her. It had to do with Khan, obviously. They knew he'd been John Harrison, but it had been over two years since he'd used that name. The last time had been . . . Qo'noS.

"What do you want with my husband?" she rasped.

"That is for _us_ to know," Koloth growled. "Now get on your feet!"

He gripped her arm with bruising force and hauled her upright. The room swayed and she stumbled, unable to catch herself with Nolan in her arms.

Koloth said something in his tongue and made as if to hit her. She ducked, curling against the wall, and gasped, "Please, no! I'm pregnant!"

The Klingon captain froze with a hand in the air, his dark eyes wide. Before he could speak, the other one was back with what appeared to be a first aid kit, and she belatedly realised it was the one from the cabin, the one Khan had left there after Joachim had hammered the nail into his hand.

The two Klingons conversed, and the lower-rank one left again, returning in a few moments with what looked like a medical tricorder. He scanned her with it, then said something to his captain. To Anthea, with her pounding head and nausea, it sounded like dogs growling and barking.

She yelped when the captain grabbed her arm again and hauled her out into a corridor. Anthea nearly had to run to keep up, holding her son tight.

To her surprise, he opened a door to a small cabin, shoved her through the door, and tossed the first aid kit on the floor. Then the door slid shut and an indicator light to the side flashed red.

Anthea took that to mean the door was locked. She slowly let out a breath and surveyed the room. It was barely four square metres, just big enough for a cot, a wash-stand, and a horrifyingly basic toilet. Still, it was an improvement from that cramped little space she'd been in.

She set Nolan on the bed and retrieved the first aid kit. After dry-swallowing two pain killers, she used antiseptic wipes to clean the blood off her face and did what she could to bandage her forehead in the meagre reflection from the sink, as there was no mirror.

"You are being such a good boy, Nolan," she said to her son, when she joined him on the bed. "I know it's scary. But Daddy will come for us. He'll be here soon, and he'll take us home."

Nolan nuzzled against her, popping his thumb into his mouth. "Mama," he mumbled around it.

"Shh. Go to sleep, baby." She leaned her head against the wall.

Her head hurt viciously and she wanted Khan more than ever before.

She could only pray he'd find them in time.


	17. Chapter Sixteen

**-Chapter Sixteen-**

It was decided somewhat hastily that the best chance they had of tracking down the Klingons was from the _Enterprise_. Khan didn't want to waste time coming back for his men-and he knew he'd need them if he were to go after the Klingons-he asked for volunteers to hunt the Klingons who had taken Anthea.

To his surprise, nearly every hand went up. Wallace was injured and elected to stay behind, having caught a bat'leth to the shoulder in the earlier skirmish. Kati, too, voted to stay and tend the Brinthi child. Yves, desperately in love with Kati, obviously chose to stay with her.

Khan assigned three others, including Joachim and Inigo, to remain on Sitara. The rest travelled to the _Enterprise_, some via transporter, some via shuttle.

"This was not how I expected things to go," Khan muttered to Otto as they made their way to the enormous ship.

"Ja, you expected to come home to your wife," Otto said.

"Yes, that, obviously. I meant with the child. I brought him for you and Chin."

Otto stared at him, hazel eyes wide, and laughed. "I am honoured, Kaiser, but I will not fight your sister for him! She is very taken with him already. I think he will be good for her."

"I agree, strange as it is." Khan looked out the transport window as they left the atmosphere and the Enterprise appeared.

"Khan," Otto said quietly. "Why did you not tell us of Kaiserin's condition?"

It took Khan a moment to turn from the window. He struggled to keep his voice level. It always amazed him just how deeply Anthea affected him, even now. "We've been waiting until she reached the second trimester. Tradition, you know."

"You do not strike me as traditional type, Khan," Otto said.

"Some things . . . I find myself very traditional about, Otto."

He regarded the man seated next to him, the man who had been his second-in-command for years. He'd first met Otto when he'd fled Russia with his German-born mother, and hidden in New Delhi where Khan had been working in an auto repair garage. Otto was one of the first Augments, and his mother, Hilde, had known Sarina Kaur. She hadn't known of Khan's mother's death. Unfortunately, Hilde had been a normal human, and a bombing by militants had killed her within weeks of their arrival in India. Khan, just eighteen at the time, had taken Otto in. It was Otto who had spurred him to take Russia, when he'd risen to power. Otto who had been there for him like an adopted brother.

When Otto had met Chin, and come out as gay, Khan hadn't been bothered by the revelation. It gratified him that when he'd woken Otto and told him of Anthea, his lieutenant had welcomed his wife with open arms.

Others hadn't been so gracious, but Khan knew that what Rodriguez had done had shaken them. He never asked more of his people than they could give, but in this case, he had been ready to force every one of them to come with him. That he hadn't had to pleased him immeasurably.

Their dynamic was different now. Before they'd fled Earth, his relation to the rest of them had been more distant. They'd had to go into hiding a year before they'd managed to escape on the Botany Bay, and while they'd lost a few during that time, and during the intervening centuries, the group was different, closer, than it had been before. He was more the chief of a small tribe than the leader of a great nation. They needed to adjust; he'd had his time while with Starfleet, and he wasn't the man they'd known before, not entirely.

That change was due in large part to Anthea, and their son.

He didn't want to think about what losing them for good would do to him.

* * *

Otto was awed by the _USS Enterprise_. He'd seen the _Reliance_, of course, and knew how many modern things worked, but there was something about Starfleet's flagship that really impressed the man. Khan would have found his gawking amusing if their situation hadn't been so dire.

He followed Kalim, the security lieutenant with the strange teeth, to a conference room, and he and Otto paused outside, waiting 'til the security officer had gone.

Khan stood with his hand posed over the touchpad to open the door, his enhanced hearing picking up the conversation occuring inside.

Spock was apparently in the middle of lecturing Kirk yet again. "Captain, on further consideration, I do not believe this is a wise idea. Given our previous experience with Khan, I am given to believe that even if we _do_ retrieve Anthea Harrison, he is likely to seek vengeance upon the Klingons as a whole. We have seen what he alone is capable of. Do we wish to risk his eradicating the entire species?"

"Y'know, Spock, while I'd normally agree with you, they _really_ should have considered that before they took his wife and his kid. What was it that guy said during World War Two? Something about waking a sleeping giant? Well, this time, it was a dragon. The Klingons are gonna get burned."

Khan smirked. Beside him, Otto chuckled.

They opened the door and stepped in.

"Actually, that quote was never definitively attributable to Isoroku Yamamoto," Khan said. "But it was a lovely end to the film _Tora! Tora! Tora!_, was it not?"

"_Ja_, Kaiser," Otto said. He took a seat at the table.

Khan remained standing, and crossed to the viewport.

"You seem to continue to operate under the delusion that I committed any sort of genocide," he said. He had his back to Kirk and Spock. "I realise records are spotty for that time period, but while I didn't tolerate criminals and the like in my kingdom, I was hardly the type to massacre people simply because they were . . . inferior. Others did that, Mister Spock, not I. Yes, there were massacres that occured in what became my territory, but they _stopped_ when I took over. I am not Vlad the Impaler, happy to murder thousands to fulfil a momentary whim. If I really were the type, Spock, don't you think I would have done more than target Marcus and his pet project? Because my rage at Starfleet is far more vast than that, but I haven't touched more than a fraction of a percentage of the whole."

"You tried to kill me and my crew!" Kirk interjected.

"Because I knew that if I made my escape, with my people or not, you would hunt me. You would never rest, because that is who you are, Kirk. I would become your white whale."

Khan turned. He eyed Spock coldly. "You made me believe you had killed my people. Then you imprisoned me again, still letting me believe they were gone. When I attempted to escape you in San Francisco, Spock, do you know where I was going?"

"To assault Headquarters," the Vulcan replied without hesitation.

Khan shook his head. "No. I was attempting to get away so I could find my wife, to see if Marcus had killed her, as he threatened to do. I know you are aware of that, Kirk, Anthea told you as much."

Kirk held up his hands. "Okay, you think Spock's a heartless jerk. Let's get to why we're _actually_ here."

He pushed a few buttons on the edge of the table, and a holographic map popped up over the surface. "This is the Beta Quadrant, or what we know if it, anyway."

Another few button pushes, and it zoomed in. "This is where we are now. CX-431 Alpha, or Sitara, as you're calling it. Over here's the Brinthini system. Waaaaay over here is Qo'noS. I'm not sure what the Klingons were even doing in this area."

Khan approached the table. Since the map was also directable with hand gestures, he reached into the hologram and changed the view. "Here are known Federation member planets within six sectors. They would not hide in these areas, as it is technically Federation space. My guess would be that they have taken refuge closer to the core, further from Federation space."

"We cannot be certain," Spock said.

"It is sound reasoning," Otto said, casting the Vulcan a dark glance. "Better to hide in the wilds than risk discovery by accident."

Khan stared at the holographic stars, vision going unfocused. So many places to look. Where the hell were they supposed to _start_? She'd already been gone nearly eighteen hours, at least. He had no idea how early she'd gotten up and gone to the cabin, but he suspected they'd missed her kidnappers by less than an hour. She had trouble sleeping if he wasn't there, he knew, and if she'd gone at first light, before dawn . . .

"Spock," Kirk said. "Look up what known planets are in this and the surrounding sectors that the Federation isn't friendly with. Ones we made contact with the last time through that were hostile. They might harbour some Klingons."

"Yes, Captain."

Kirk met Khan's gaze through the holographic star field. "It's a place to start," the captain said, and Khan had to turn away.

It was better than nothing, but it didn't feel anywhere close to enough.


	18. Chapter Seventeen

**-Chapter Seventeen-**

She had no idea how long it had been since they'd been taken. At least two days, Anthea thought, but outside of that, she couldn't tell. She hadn't been wearing her watch when they'd been abducted, and there was no clock in their small room.

Surely Khan had returned to Sitara and found them gone by now. He would be frantic with worry. She could only imagine the kind of hell he was raising. She found the thought of him plowing through the Klingons highly entertaining.

There was nothing in the room she could use as a weapon. The bed was bolted to the floor and the wall, made of a very solid piece of metal she couldn't break. It was the same with the toilet and the sink. There was a sensor on the faucet hat turned it on and off, no handles, and the toilet flushed automatically, too. There was no window, the bed had no linens, and the door had no access panel from the inside.

It only opened under armed guard, twice a day, when they brought food for her and Nolan. Rather, they brought one meal, and she split it with her son, making sure he was fed before she ate her own portion.

Anthea lay on the bed, Nolan in her arms, and told him stories to keep him entertained and herself sane. She'd already run through the plot of _Star Wars_, all twelve films, and a few fairytales. Even at almost seventeen months, Nolan was particular about his bedtime stories.

"Alright, how about this one? Once upon a time, there lived a little boy, a prince in a far-away kingdom. He was a very special little boy, but he was also sad."

"Why sad, Mama?"

"Because his mummy died, and he and his sister had to go live with mean people. This little boy loved his sister very much, and he also loved animals and playing in nature. But the mean people didn't let him play with animals, or have any fun at all. So this prince grew up, and he became mean, too, because no one loved him. All he wanted was for someone to love him, but the people were afraid of him. He was their prince, and he looked after his people, but he was cold, and he never played and didn't have any friends."

Nolan frowned. "Play wif' him?"

Anthea smiled. "One day, the prince's sister was kidnapped by an evil dragon. So he went to rescue her, because she was the only one who loved him. Along the way, he met a beautiful princess, who was kind and didn't care that he was mean. Since he was tired from his journey, the princess offered the prince a place to stay for the night, and some food, so he could continue on to rescue his sister."

"Dwagon?"

"A dragon is a terrible, scary beast, with claws and fangs, that growls and lives in dark places," she told him. "They have scales and glowing eyes, and they don't like people."

"Oh."

"The prince stayed for a time with the princess, and he fell in love with her. He'd never been in love before, since he had been mean for so long. He told the princess he wanted to marry her, but he needed to slay the dragon first. The princess, who had been alone for a long time, had seen the special boy he had been, and loved him, too. She told him she would wait for him.

"So the prince left to go defeat the horrible dragon, and the princess waited. He found the dragon, and he slew it, but it was a trap! He was imprisoned with his sister, and had no way to get free, because he had been mean, and no one wanted to come save him.

"No one except the princess! She got tired of waiting for him, so she gathered up her army and she went to find the dragon's lair. There, she found the prince and she rescued him and his sister. They were married, and they joined their kingdoms, and lived as king and queen in a place where no one would be mean to each other."

"Dey have babies?"

Anthea ruffled her son's hair. "They had lots of babies! They had sons, and daughters, who all grew up happy because their mummy and daddy loved them very, very much."

Nolan traced a chubby finger over the Starfleet insignia on Anthea's breast. "Want Dada."

"Me, too, sweetheart. Me, too."

* * *

The _Enterprise_ had a recreation area with a pool, a lounge, a holodeck, and a workout area. Khan's men, trapped for so long in cryotubes and on a planet with only felling trees and construction for a workout, were rather excited about the exercise equipment.

They'd been on the ship for a few days now, going from system to system-the Enterprise managing to do its assigned exploration duties as well as hunting for the Klingons-and Khan was nearing the absolute end of his patience. Ordinarily, he had nearly infinite control; after all, he'd managed to stay Marcus's puppet for a year.

But worry for Anthea, for Nolan, and for their unborn child, made him feel like a fraying rope.

He was seriously considering implanting tracking devices under their skin when he got them back.

The workout area had a punching bag, but Khan was worried that he'd break the thing, so he spent an hour doing nothing but laps in the pool, trying desperately to use up the excess emotion he wasn't accustomed to.

Meditation didn't work. Given what he was, working himself into exhaustion took days and wasn't an option. He needed his strength for when they found his wife.

Most of the crew of the Enterprise hadn't seen Khan or his men in action, so if they weren't on-duty, they tended to gather in clusters and watch, especially when they cleared the deck around the pool and began sparring.

Khan refrained from the sparring sessions; he was the fastest, the strongest, and the most ruthless, and with the way he was currently feeling, he didn't want to end up hurting anyone.

That was, until Commander Spock came to watch.

"An impressive force," the Vulcan said to Khan. He stood with his hands folded behind him, watching impassively as Otto and a huge black man named Yenge wrestled.

A few other crew members wandered in, including Kalim, the security officer. Khan noted that there were a lot of female crew watching, and privately thought that he wouldn't be the least surprised if some of them defected to join their colony, especially that redhead over there. What was her name, again? McGivers?

Khan turned to the ship's first officer. "This is merely play, Mr. Spock."

"Play?" the Vulcan repeated.

"Much like tigers, Mr. Spock," Khan murmured. "How they play to keep their skills sharp for the hunt."

Spock's dark eyes flicked to his face. "Indeed? And why do you not participate?"

"You have seen me fight, Spock," Khan retorted. "That was after over two centuries asleep. They do this to keep occupied, not because they need it."

The Vulcan eyed him in silence for several long moments. "And yet, I had little trouble defeating you."

It took so little to make Khan's blood boil over. He lashed out, catching Spock by the throat, and had him in a choke-hold in a second flat.

"'Little trouble'," Khan repeated bitterly. "You only defeated me because I was exhausted from nearly four days without sleep and I was injured from the crash. And then your woman showed up. Hardly fair odds, Spock. Would you like to try me _now_?"

The Vulcan's face was turning green from the blood trapped by Khan's grip. "No," Spock managed to gasp out. "I would not."

Khan released him, aware that everyone watched them. Spock fell to one knee, then stiffly got to his feet.

"One of these days," Khan said darkly, "I will have my revenge for what you did."

"You may _try_," Spock retorted.

The commander turned on one foot and strode out, shoving through the crowd of onlookers.

Otto, dripping with sweat, came over with a towel around his neck. "That is the Vulcan that broke your arm, _ja_?"

"Yes," Khan hissed. "And someday, I will break _him_."

* * *

Sleep was uneasy and difficult for Khan of late. He'd been prone to nightmares since Marcus had forced him into servitude, and Anthea had been a balm against them. With her gone, and the added fear of not knowing where she was or if she lived, made Khan's sleep restless and fitful.

He lay in the dark, staring at the display on the nightstand clock, watching one minute tick to another, and considered asking Otto to beat him senseless just so he could spend an hour or so unconscious.

There was a faint sound at his door, and light from the corridor spilled into Khan's quarters as the panel slid open. He was instantly alert, calling for the lights.

That lieutenant he'd noticed earlier, McGivers, stood just inside the door, dressed in off-duty garments with her red hair loose around her shoulders. She stared at him with big, brown eyes as he rose from the bed.

"What are you doing in here?" he demanded.

She was very pretty, but didn't compare in any way to his Anthea. "Um. I thought . . ."

The woman stammered, eyes taking in his pale skin, muscles, and the hint of dark hair at the waist of the pants he'd been sleeping in.

It wasn't difficult to guess what she'd thought. A lot of women tended to assume he was offering things he wasn't if he looked at them. And if he hadn't been married, hadn't been so all-consumingly in love with his wife, he might have taken what she silently offered.

Khan gritted his teeth, crossed the room, and backed her against the wall, his hand wrapped loosely around her throat. "Lieutenant McGivers, isn't it?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Lieutenant," he said softly. "Do you have any idea who I am?"

"Khan Noonien Singh," she breathed. "A twentieth-century man who once ruled a huge nation."

"And you are not threatened by me?"

She shook her head.

He smiled darkly. "Lieutenant. Do you know why I am on board?"

"One of your men's families was kidnapped."

Khan slammed her against the wall. "MY _WIFE_," he thundered. "My _wife_ and my _son_ were taken, and you sneak in here, in the middle of the night, seeking favours?!"

He released her and she slumped to the floor, rattled by his response. "I- I'm sorry! I didn't know!"

He glared down at her. "If you want to offer yourself to one of my men, feel free. But if you _ever_ come near me again . . ."

McGivers rose shakily to her feet. Her eyes were full of tears. Without a word, she hurried from the room.

A tiny sliver of him felt remorse for scaring her so badly, but the rest didn't care one bit for her feelings whatsoever.

Khan stood there, hands clenched, breathing hard with rage. He couldn't _believe_ the woman's audacity!

The door chimed. Khan said, "Enter!" and Otto stepped in.

"Kaiser, I heard you yelling," his friend said.

"Yes," Khan murmured. He took several deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down. "I just had a visit from . . . someone who misunderstood."

"The red-haired woman in the corridor?" Otto guessed dryly. "If I were into women, I would say she was pretty. Perhaps even your type once."

"Once," Khan said. "Now there is only one woman for me, and I very, very much want to find her."

Otto jerked his head towards the door. "I saw that one watching the men. She does often. If she chooses to come with us, when we go back to Sitara . . .?"

"She is welcome to, if one of the men-or the women-wants her. I think I made it clear that I am not interested. And after that . . ." He smiled, just a little. "I'll let Anthea deal with her."

". . . You are _evil_ sometimes, Khan," Otto said, and he laughed. "Good night, my friend. You lock the door now, _ja_?"

"_Ja_," Khan replied wryly.


	19. Chapter Eighteen

_A/N: This will probably be the only update this week, as I'm going on a trip and don't know what my internet access situation will be._

**-Chapter Eighteen-**

The landing of the ship jolted Anthea out of a daze. She had a sleepy-but-awake Nolan tucked against her side. He held a handful of her hair in his fist. She'd once shorn her hair off when he was tiny, so that he couldn't grab her hair, but now, she didn't mind. If he needed the extra security, she'd let him have it.

The door opened and two armed Klingons, with disruptors in hand, barked at her. She didn't need to speak the language to understand this time. They wanted her to get up.

With Nolan in her arms, she was marched down the corridor of the large ship and out to the planet surface. She had no idea where they were, but she didn't guess it was Qo'noS. For one, the moon in the sky was intact. It was dark, well after sundown, and difficult to make out any details of where they'd landed. There were trees, and lights flickered between them, illuminating crude structures that seemed to be hastily erected scattered through the forest. There were Klingons everywhere.

"Mama," Nolan whispered. "Dwagons!"

She kissed the top of his head. "I know, baby."

Koloth appeared and led them to a small building that resembled a shed. There were no windows, but the wooden planks making up the walls had large gaps. She and Nolan were unceremoniously shoved inside, and the door slammed shut.

The inside didn't look much better than the outside. A single, flickering light hung from a crossbeam on the low ceiling, bathing the interior in a weak, ugly light that tinged everything vaguely yellow. There was a thin pallet on the floor in one corner, and bucket in another. A single pipe with a simple on/off tap snaked down the wall, from a small cistern she'd glimpsed briefly outside. The meaning of the bucket was fairly easy, and she grimaced.

Holding Nolan against her hip with one arm-he was getting a little heavy for this, she realised-she prodded the mattress with a foot, hoping there were no vermin living in or under it. Vigilance was difficult with as tired as she was, both physically and emotionally drained. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but nothing _seemed_ to move near the bed.

Reluctantly, she set Nolan on the bed. Immediately, he did his potty dance, so she took him over to the waste bucket.

He made a face at it. "Yucky!"

"I know, sweetheart, I'm sorry."

The toddler unhappily did his business, with Anthea holding him up. The poor thing didn't have any shoes, since she hadn't put any on him the morning they'd gone to the cabin.

The pallet was uncomfortable, the floor beneath made of dirt, and every rock seemed to dig into Anthea's back as she exhaustedly flopped down on it. Her head hurt again, no surprise there. At least they'd let her keep the first aid kit, but there had only been a handful of pain relievers in it, and she had one pill left.

Nolan burrowed against her and she held him close. His hair was in need of a trim, and the way it fell across his forehead made him look so much like a miniature Khan that it hurt.

She looked up, through a chink in the roof, and saw a star winking high in the sky. For all she knew, that star was CX-431, or Sol. Still, it was the first one she'd seen.

"Star light, star bright," she whispered. "First star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight . . ."

* * *

Five days, now, since Anthea had vanished, and Khan felt every second tick away. It was too much like those days when he sought his vengeance against Marcus, and he knew that if he didn't find her soon, he was going to end up killing someone aboard the _Enterprise_ with his bare hands.

He had, after all, been specifically created to be a brutal warrior. As much as he tried to control it, the bloodlust was in his very DNA.

"Does anyone have a proper blade, or are we too civilised for that?" Khan asked, as they left yet another system behind, no closer to finding his wife than they had been when they'd left Sitara.

Kirk arched a brow. "We have phasers."

"I am aware of that, Captain. But I am not in the mood for bloodless warfare, Kirk. I intend to slaughter every one of them, and I want a blade for that."

Kalim flinched. Khan whirled, slamming him into the wall, an arm across his throat.

"Perhaps I should start with you?" he demanded.

"Khan!" Kirk yelped. He was baffled by the sudden turn. "That's Kalim, one of our sec-"

"He is a Klingon, Captain," Khan growled. "I suspected before, but he just now confirmed it. Are you all truly that blind? He _reeks_ of it."

Kalim bared his teeth, the ones Khan had noticed before were unusually even, as if ground down. "Let me go!"

"Make me," Khan retorted. "Tell me, Kirk, does your doctor still have that tribble he ressurrected with my blood?"

"How did you-"

"My wife, Kirk. She tells me everything."

Kirk let out an explosive breath. "Okay, say you're right. What do you need the tribble for?"

Still effortlessly holding Kalim, Khan turned to the captain. "Do you not know? How tedious you lot are. Bring me the tribble, Captain, and I shall prove it."

The entire bridge crew watched them with trepidation. Kirk stared at Khan for several long moments, then leaned over and paged Medbay. "Bones, can you bring that tribble to the bridge, please?"

They waited in tense silence for McCoy to arrive. When he appeared, he held the chirping ball of fur in his hands. "Not exactly my usual equipment," the cantankerous doctor said.

"Bring it here," Khan directed.

When McCoy got within five feet of Khan and Kalim, something odd happened. The tribble he held bgan to writhe, squealing as if in pain. Kalim hissed at it and tried to break free from Khan's grip, which was a useless attempt.

"What the hell?" McCoy blurted.

"Klingons and tribbles, natural enemies," Khan drawled. "How did I know it was Kalim, Kirk? His hair and skin are typical of a Klingon, though his lack of head ridges is not. His teeth are filed down to resemble a human's, though he did it wrong. Only a higher-ranking crew member, ideally placed as a spy, would have been privy to my information, in order to pass it on to the group that kidnapped my family. You only have two new officers on the bridge, Kirk. This . . . _man_, and the Andorian female at the communications station beside Uhura."

McCoy handed the tribble to a somewhat perplexed Spock and pulled out his tricorder. He used it to scan Kalim. ". . . I'll be damned. He _is_ a Klingon."

Khan focused his attention on Kalim. "Tell me where they are, and I will make your death a short one."

Kalim said something in Klingon and spat in Khan's face. The augmented human wiped the spittle off with the back of his hand and responded in the same tongue.

"Wait, what's he saying?" Kirk demanded.

"It's best left untranslated," Khan told him. "Is that really what you're going to go with, Kalim?"

"Everything I do is for the Empire!"

"Wrong answer," Khan snarled. He twisted, bearing Kalim to the floor, landing on the Klingon with a knee to the chest.

His hands were a blur of motion, too fast for Kirk to follow. Kalim shrieked, high and long, a sound none of the _Enterprise_ crew had heard a grown male of _any_ species make, let alone a Klingon one.

Uhura winced and averted her eyes. Several other crew members looked ill.

"Khan!" Kirk barked. "We don't torture-"

"Pain is all they know, Captain," Khan interrupted. He dug his fingers harder into whatever tender spot the Klingon had, right under his ribs. "It is all they will respond to. Believe me. I have plenty of experience with extracting information from them."

"Yes, you _were_ one of Starfleet's best operatives, were you not?" Spock interjected, speaking for the first time. He still held the disturbed tribble in his hands.

"_The_ best, Mr. Spock."

The Klingon on the floor said something that made Khan grin. It was _not_ a comforting expression, and several of the crew took a few large steps back. Khan replied in Klingon and grabbed the front of Kalim's head, slamming his skull into the floor.

"Uh . . . Well." Kirk stammered and cleared his throat, thoroughly rattled. They'd had a Klingon in a senior crew position for over a year? What _else_ had he spilled to the enemy? "If you . . . really need to . . ."

He trailed off awkwardly. "Don't do it on the bridge?"

Khan lifted Kalim to his feet. "Gladly. Perhaps I'll show him my old quarters in the brig."

He left, dragging Kalim along. When the bridge doors closed, the tension in the room palpably dropped.

McCoy was the first to speak. "That man is crazier than my cousin Jeb, and _he_ thinks he can talk to rocks."

* * *

Kirk didn't want to think about what Khan was doing to Kalim down in the brig, but he knew the man was right. Klingons weren't known for compassion or reason beyond their own code. He didn't like the idea of torturing Kalim-if that was even his actual name-but Kirk couldn't see an alternative.

"While I do not condone torture," Spock told him, "one could say that as an enemy party, Kalim is not a member of Starfleet and is subject to Khan's jurisdiction as a prisoner of war."

Kirk stared at his first officer. "Sometimes, you worry me."

The bridge door slide open, and Khan stepped in. "Permission to come on the bridge, Captain?"

"Uh . . . granted."

Khan was freshly showered, and dressed in borrowed Starfleet attire, eerily identical to when he'd first been aboard, two years before. His black hair was slicked back, and it wasn't 'til then that Kirk realised the engineered human had been wearing it loose, a marked change to the Khan he'd met the first time.

"There is an outpost three sectors away, towards the galactic core," Khan said without preamble.

"And? Why'd they do any of this?"

"Their moon, Praxis, has been destroyed, as you know. It is causing the death of their planet, and as such, they are searching for a new home. They see no problem with raiding any civilisations they come across, which is what occured on Brinthini."

Kirk frowned. Beside him, Spock inquired, "And your colony?"

Khan didn't look at the Vulcan. He was still angry for his trickery, and for besting him in battle. "They came specifically for Anthea, as we knew. Our theory was correct. They know that I am the one who took out their patrol on Qo'noS. There _was_ a survivor." Khan clenched his teeth. "Kalim overheard our discussion regarding . . . my abilities, and he passed that information to the second Bird of Prey. It is apparently a new standard procedure for them, in case they meet hostiles such as Federation ships or a race called Cardassians? No matter. They sought to lure me into a trap and capture me."

"But you _have_ left your colony," Spock pointed out.

"With an army of my kind, Mr. Spock. You saw what one can do, what twenty can do. Imagine what nearly seventy are capable of."

"I am aware," the Vulcan intoned. "And that is what concerns me."


	20. Chapter Nineteen

**-Chapter Nineteen-**

In the light of day, the sunlight filtering through the chinks in the walls and ceiling, their "accomodations" didn't improve any. Breakfast was delivered shortly after dawn, and Anthea woke Nolan. There was enough food for two, had been since she'd informed them she was pregnant, but motherly instinct had her waiting for her son to have his fill-even if he wasn't happy about the selection-before eating her own portion.

She leaned against the wall, grateful that at least it wasn't splintery. Her skin full of slivers-or worse, Nolan's-wasn't something she could deal with right now.

Anthea found herself pressing the fingers of her right hand against the tender, softer flesh of her inner arm, and her breathing quickened. She thought she'd managed to break herself of that habit, after this long. It must have been being trapped in the dark like this that brought it back.

The summer between her third and fourth years at the Starfleet Academy, she'd been approached about joining Starfleet Intelligence, specifically Section 31. It was top-secret, and they watched candidates for at least two years before making an approach. They wanted to be absolutely certain they chose the right cadet or officer, because if they declined, that person had a tendency to disappear, or have a tragic accident.

Of course, at the time, Anthea had known none of this. She'd been approached, and she'd been very flattered. They had a position in mind for her, one they thought she'd be perfect for. Their London facility needed a handler, and they thought she was just the person for the job.

She'd stupidly said yes.

They'd put her through two intense weeks of training and indoctrination.

And after the two weeks, they'd given her to _him_.

Anthea had never found out who he was; she'd been blindfolded and tied to a chair for three days, with minimal water to keep her alive, no sleep and no chance to relieve herself. And during those three days, he had tested her. If she gave the wrong answer, he cut her. If she gave the _right_ answer, he cut her.

Somehow, she'd survived. For the first few weeks of her final school year, she'd sported livid, ugly scars on her forearms, some extending up past her elbow. She'd been grateful for the hideous cadet uniforms, because they'd hidden the deep, dark red weals.

Eventually, she'd had the surface of her skin treated, so there was no little to no outward sign of them, save for a small bump in the crease of her left elbow. That spot had been so knotted with scar tissue that nothing save the most intrusive treatments could make it go away. But under the skin, long, hard lines of scar tissue ran the length of both forearms.

She knew Khan had noticed them, had felt his fingertips brushing over them when he thought she was asleep. But he'd never asked, and she'd never offered. They were as honest with each other as they could be, but that was one subject she just couldn't broach, and he knew the darker parts of the world well enough to let her have that.

Anthea forced herself to let go of her arm and let out a slow breath. She had, over the years, managed to forget most of what they had done to her. Still, she hoped the man who had hurt her had died when Khan arrange for the London facility's bombing. Not as satisfying as doing it herself, but it would be satisfactory nonetheless.

Actually, she hoped he killed everyone who got between them.

Especially these Klingons. She'd always been interested in other species and cultures, and liked diversity. But to Anthea, the Klingons needed to die horribly. And they were going to.

She flattened her hand over the small swell of her stomach. They wanted Khan for something, had taken her and Nolan to draw him out, likely to draw him _here_.

She snorted. Stupidest thing they could have ever done.

* * *

Contrary to expectation, Khan hadn't rended Kalim limb from limb. He'd been tempted, _so_ tempted, but had managed to refrain from it. They might need more information out of the Klingon.

Rodriguez, however . . . His anger at the betrayal made him seek out the punching bag in the gym at last, and while his punches were controlled, they were swift and hard, fists thumping into the leather and sand over and over.

Perhaps he had been too quick in his punishment of Rodriguez. Khan certainly would have loved to have him here, in place of this bag, something to beat his fists against that he didn't have to worry about breaking. Something he could have enjoyed breaking, over and over.

What was done, however, was done.

"Excuse me."

Khan caught the bag, bare hands braced on its sides to stop it swinging. Unlike the normal humans, he had no need for protective gloves. He turned to face his visitor.

To his surprise, it was the ship's pilot.

"Ah. Hikaru Sulu," he said. "Finally we meet. I must say, I quite enjoyed your threat on Qo'noS. Just the right balance between authoritative and deadly."

The human didn't look impressed with his snark. "I don't like you," Sulu said flatly. "You do horrible things to people, and you nearly killed everyone on this ship."

Khan arched a brow. "You came all the way down here to tell me that?"

"No."

The younger man pulled a long, thin object from behind his back, and offered it.

"I don't like you," he repeated. "But I've seen what Klingons can do, and if I can help you get your wife and son back from them, I will. She probably doesn't remember me, but I met her once when I was in the Academy. She helped me find my way to a class when I was first starting out. That's why I'm loaning you this."

Khan took the oblong thing in his hands. "What is it?"

"It's a katana."

Blue eyes met black. "A katana."

"Push that button right there. But don't point it at me."

Bemused, Khan did as instructed. To his surprise-and, admittedly, delight-a long, wickedly-sharp blade unfolded from the handle. He hefted the katana, testing its weight and balance.

"This is fascinating," he told Sulu. "And you carry this with you?"

Sulu shrugged. "Not usually. I keep it in my cabin. My hobby is fencing."

Khan had to laugh at that. "Fencing with a katana. How delightful."

"You scare me." Sulu shook his head. "You can use that, but I want it back when you're done."

Inclining his head in thanks, Khan said, "Of course. Thank you for the use of it."

Sulu shook his head again and quickly left.

* * *

"Your brain is keeping me awake."

Kirk rolled to his left side, finding Carol watching him with concern. "Sorry."

She reached over and ran her fingers through his short, blonde hair. "Don't be. What is it that's got you so restless, Jim?"

He sighed and snaked an arm around her waist, her bare skin warm against the cool air of his cabin. "Just . . . thinking. Anthea said some things, after Khan tried to concave my face, and they've been rolling around in my head ever since. And . . . I can't imagine what he's going through, Carol. I hate the guy, but . . . His wife and kid are missing, and I can't promise we'll find them alive."

The beautiful blonde he held pressed close, sliding her fingers delicately over his chest. "You can't let it eat at you. It wasn't your fault that the Klingons took her, it was his."

"Yeah, 'cause I asked him to help me."

"No. It's because he made himself their target when he went to Qo'noS," she said. "This is the consequence of that."

Jim shook his head. "I don't think so. I mean, yeah, I can see that, but . . . When he took out the patrol? That was to save me, Spock, and Uhura. He _helped_ us. I kept seeing him as just this murderer, but he keeps . . . doing things that make me see him differently.

She pulled out of his arms and sat up. "Are you telling me that you . . . _sympathise_ with him?!"

"Not . . . exactly."

Carol threw back the covers and jumped out of bed, hunting for the clothes she'd discarded earlier. "I don't _believe_ this. That man murdered my father, Jim!"

Kirk, too, left the bed. "Carol, I'm not about to become best friends with the guy."

She shook her head, blonde bob flying. "It's her, isn't it? Anthea Mackintosh. I knew her once, you know. At the London facility. I had to work with her a few times. She was a cold bitch."

Kirk frowned, dark blonde brows drawing together. "When was this?"

"Oh, two years ago or so? When I was trying to find answers about the torpedoes."

He snorted. "Carol, of _course_ she was distant and . . ." He was reluctant to call Anthea any names, for any number of reasons. "You do realise that she was working on a project she wasn't allowed to tell you anything about, and that she was trying to hide her marriage to Harrison from your father?"

Carol huffed out a frustrated breath and tossed the blue uniform dress she'd just retrieved back on the floor. "I still can't believe you _slept_ with her!"

He caught her around the waist, pulling her to him. She resisted, a little, then melted into him, resting her head against his shoulder. "Carol. You _know_ the kind of guy I was before you. You teased me about it a lot."

"Don't remind me," she grumbled. "I _want_ to be angry and selfish, Jim. But I can't, can I?"

"No, I don't think you can right now. Sorry."

Carol wrapped her arms around his waist. "She tried to be nice to me, actually. She _was_ nice, until, oh, October or so of that year? I suppose I _was_ annoying, and pulling her away from her work."

It was so strange to reconcile the knowledge that Anthea was married to _Khan_, with the proper Starfleet Intelligence agent who had pretty much been running the London facility at that point. Not in an official capacity, of course, but everyone had known that if they wanted or needed something, Agent Mackintosh was the one to get it for you. Her involvement with John Harrison at the time explained an awful lot about the sudden shift in her behaviour.

"After . . . everything," she told Jim quietly, "I went to the base where they transferred the survivors of the London facility. Anthea was there. She was working as the assistant to Admiral Brody. She was, oh, about five months pregnant at the time, and I remember, she looked so miserable. I didn't even think to ask her why."

He pressed a kiss to the top of Carol's head, but didn't speak.

"I feel so bad now." Carol tipped her head back and looked up at him. "She's pregnant again, isn't she? That _is_ what you and Khan were discussing?"

Jim nodded. "She is, yeah."

"Part of me . . . wants to hate that she's got her little family, at the expense of mine. But . . . Jim, did my need to know about the torpedoes- Did I cause it? Did I make Dad . . .?"

"No!" he said quickly, perhaps a little _too_ quickly. "No, of course not. Admiral Marcus was gonna find out what Khan was doing anyway."

But in the back of his mind, Kirk knew that if Marcus hadn't discovered Khan's plot when he did, Khan wouldn't have fled, wouldn't have attacked Starfleet. Marcus would be alive, and Anthea wouldn't have spent two years without her husband.

And the admiral would have begun a war that could potentially have killed them all.

Things as they transpired had been horrible. But how much worse would it have been otherwise?

The thought sent a shiver down Jim Kirk's back, and he hugged Carol closer.


	21. Chapter Twenty

**-Chapter Twenty-**

At long last, the _USS Enterprise_ dropped out of warp near an unnamed system, where they found a veritable fleet of Klingon ships orbiting the primary planet.

"Captain, if we attack the Klingons, it could be considered an act of war," Spock cautioned.

"And their kidnapping a Federation citizen, not to mention a Starfleet officer?" Kirk asked.

"Technically speaking, Anthea Harrison is no longer either."

"Yeah, but they don't know that, do they?" Kirk sighed. "I wasn't expecting this many ships."

Khan stood silently, listening to the discussion between captain and first officer, though his gaze remained fixed on the six Birds of Prey on the magnified viewscreen. It seems to keep piling on, he thought. How long will this continue?

"Khan?"

He turned at the sound of Kirk's voice. "You want my advice, Captain?"

"How likely is it, if we fire on those ships, we'll start a war?"

Khan's smile was mirthless. "Captain, you know as well as I do that at this point, any action we take to retrieve my family will be taken as an act of aggression by the Klingons. Our options are to attempt to sneak onto the planet and extract Anthea and my son . . . or to leave no survivors this time."

Kirk was troubled. He glanced to Spock. "There's no guarantee that we'll be able to get them out unnoticed."

"The chances of that are approximately nine-point-three percent," the science officer said.

"But to start a war . . .?"

Khan cleared his throat. "If I may be so bold, Kirk, as to suggest an alternative plan?"

"And what's that?" the captain inquired.

"Beam me and four of my men to the closest Bird of Prey. We'll handle the ships from there."

Spock tipped his head. "You mean to take the ship from the inside, as you did with the Vengeance, and then use it against the others?"

"Precisely, Mr. Spock. My estimation of your intelligence stands." Mentally, Khan laughed, because he'd been sarcastic when he'd called the Vulcan smart, that time Spock had accused him of betraying them.

Kirk let out an explosive sigh. "Fine. Do it."

* * *

Neither Khan nor his people needed armour, which left plenty for those from the _Enterprise_ who were going down to the surface. That excursion would wait until Khan and his strike team had taken out the orbiting ships; Khan himself would land the Bird of Prey on the surface to rescue Anthea.

Khan selected his fiercest warriors to accompany him. They made their way to the transporter room.

"I'm not sure I can beam through their shields," the transporter tech said.

Khan leaned past him and keyed in some commands on the console, and it beeped in acceptance.

"How did you- You can get by the Klingons' shielding?" Kirk demanded.

Khan gave him a level look. "I designed the transporter system of the _Vengeance_, Captain. You remember, the one that could beam individuals off this ship through its shields? The Klingons' shielding isn't anywhere near as advanced, Kirk."

He stepped up to the pad, where his men joined him. Armed with phasers, machetes, and the katana Sulu had loaned Khan, they looked almost as barbaric as the beings they were going after.

Khan nodded to the transporter tech, and he activated the teleportation sequence. White light surrounded the group, and then they were gone.

Kirk looked over at Spock. "I really hope this doesn't come back to bite us."

"I cannot say whether it will, Jim, but the chances are highly likely. If I were you, I would prepare a very good lie to tell Command if it does."

Eyeing the Vulcan, Kirk said, "You're really becoming devious, you know that?"

"I have had plenty of instruction," was his first officer's only reply.

* * *

Upon the closest Bird of Prey, Khan and his men stepped off the transporter pad they'd beamed to. Otto shook his head, then his whole body.

"I would rather not do that again, Kaiser," he confessed to Khan.

"Hopefully, you won't need to. Let's make this quick."

Khan led the way, katana in hand, his phaser rifle slung across his body, ready to be used at a moment's notice. "No prisoners," he tersely directed. "No survivors. _None_."

The Klingons had noticed a security breach and they poured into the room, disruptors and other weapons at the ready. At least, they _thought_ they were ready. Khan jumped into the fray, sword swinging, and removed two heads with one powerful blow. Then he was past, as his men went after the remaining in the transporter room.

Khan mowed down any Klingon he saw. Most barely had time to register he was even there before they were dead. With his men behind him, branching out to clear the ship, they had every Klingon except those on the bridge dealt with in less than three minutes.

Striding onto the bridge, Khan lifted the rifle in one hand and shot all but the captain in a flurry of phaser fire.

"Your name," he demanded of the captain. "What is your name?"

"Koloth," the Klingon snarled. "And you are John Harrison."

"I'm _really_ not," Khan said. "Are you the one who took my wife?"

"The human woman? She is not here any longer. She is on the surface. Good luck finding her!"

Khan let the rifle drop, falling to rest at his hip, and he lifted the katana. "I will find her," he promised.

Then he swung the blade, faster than Koloth could react, and beheaded the Klingon.

His men, who had stood watching, now turned to him.

"Ling," Khan snapped, "get that thing out of my sight. You two, Barton and Stark, man the weapons systems, at that station and that one. They're not that different from MIGs. I trust you remember?"

"Aye, Khan," the men said in unison, and hurried to do his bidding.

"What should I do, Kaiser?" Otto inquired.

Khan gestured to the captain's chair, as he took a seat in the pilot's. "Take a load off, Otto. It's likely the only time you'll be able to sit there."

Otto laughed. "_Ja_, Khan."

His leader was already seated, scanning for lifeforms on the planet's surface. There were a _lot_ of Klingons down there, and- There! Two human lifeforms, if their slightly different readings were any indication.

He smiled darkly. The fools had no idea what was about to hit them.

* * *

Aboard the _Enterprise_, Kirk and his crew waited anxiously, as far out of range of the Klingons as they could manage, for Khan to make his move. Minutes ticked by, and each one made the captain more anxious.

"Captain, the Bird of Prey we beamed Khan to is moving," Sulu said suddenly.

"Scan it," Kirk barked.

"Yes, sir." Sulu tapped a few controls. "Five lifesigns aboard, all appear to be human."

"I'll be damned," Bones muttered. "How many Klingons do they have on those?"

"Reports say at least thirty Klingons per ship," Spock told him. "Given how quickly Khan himself eliminated the patrol on Qo'noS, I would say the majority of the delay has been his instructing his men on how to operate a starship."

The Bird of Prey wheeled about, its pilot apparently getting used to the controls, and then it rocketed off, weapons firing at the other Klingon ships in a flurry of laser fire.

"Whoever's flying that has a lot of skill," Sulu commented, as the enemy ship executed a tight spiral, ducked beneath one of the others, and then flew _over_ it, upside down, strafing all of its life-support systems and nearly splitting the Bird of Prey in half.

"Khan," Kirk said. "It's Khan flying."

"How do you know?" McCoy asked him.

Kirk had a flashback to standing in a conference room at Headquarters, a jumpship dancing outside the window, raning death on those within. "Because I've seen him do it before."

In barely minutes, the other Klingon ships floated dead in space. The hulls of some had ruptured under the "friendly fire" and dead Klingons drifted by the _Enterprise_'s viewport as Sulu eased the Federation starship closer to the planet.

"Incoming transmission," Uhura said. "From the Klingon ship."

"On-screen," Kirk directed.

Khan appeared on the viewscreen. "Captain Kirk. I believe we are now clear to commence Phase Two. I will meet you on the surface."

He ended the transmission.

Kirk turned to his first officer. "Spock, you have the con. Bones, we'll need you in medbay. I'm pretty sure Khan is going to make off with that Klingon ship, but he'll be bringing Anthea here, first."

Bones nodded and left for the medical bay. Kirk gave himself a shake, nodded to Spock, and headed to round up the crew he was taking to the surface.


	22. Chapter Twenty-One

**-Chapter Twenty-One-**

None of the ships in orbit had been able to get a message to the Klingons on the planet about the impending attack. Even if they had, they wouldn't have been able to do much about it.

Khan landed the ship on the outskirts of the horrendous settlement the enemy had set up. He had waited until the _Enterprise_'s shuttles, containing the rest of his people, arrived some distance away before he'd set down. Now, he and his strike team left the ship.

"I like this ship," Otto told Khan.

"Then it's yours," Khan said. "You should have no trouble flying it, you watched me."

"Ja." Otto grinned. "Two ships will be nice to have."

Khan waited until his people were gathered, all of them armed to the teeth. He ignored Kirk and the Starfleet men for the moment.

"There are approximately three hundred Klingons here," he told them. "They are holding Anthea and Nolan near the base of those cliffs, over there, if the scans I conducted are accurate. Scorched earth procedure applies. Take what weapons and equipment you like. If you find Anthea or Nolan-or any other humans held captive, though I do not think there _are_ any-bring them to safety and alert me."

"_Ja_, Khan," Otto said. Then he thumped his hand against his chest and shouted, "_Khan Vishal Ki Jai_!"

The rest of his army repeated the war cry, and again. It sent shivers down Kirk's spine, though he didn't know what it meant. He could understand, in that moment, why the Augments had been condemned. Why Khan had been the man to rule so much of the Earth before the normal humans fought back.

Khan turned, sword raised, and screamed, "_Hama mauta lānā_!"

Well, Kirk thought as the army began its charge, if they didn't know we were coming, they do _now_.

* * *

The Klingons had been waiting for Khan to come. That was, after all, the purpose of taking his family and putting them under guard. The enemy had planned to capture him and use him, make him pay for the deaths of those in the patrol that had died at his hand.

They hadn't, however, expected for Death to come for them.

Leading the wave of warriors, Khan was a thing possessed. He didn't _care_ about how many Klingons were between him and Anthea. Their number didn't matter. He would get there, and he would take her out of this place.

He dispassionately noted, as he pulled the gore-slicked blade out of a Klingon's chest, that they were living in squalor. Their buildings were wrecks, and the place reeked of excrement and rotting meat. It was digusting, and for a race that had achieved so much-whether Khan liked them or not, they _were_ an advanced species-it was a very sad commentary on what the loss of Praxis was doing to their people.

A Klingon charged him, bat'leth raised, yelling in its language. He couldn't tell if his attacker was male or female, nor did he care. Khan ducked, slicing the alien's legs off right at the knee with the katana. The blade could cut through a sapling nearly the size of his wrist. Bone and cartilage weren't a problem in the slightest.

When the Klingon dropped, shrieking, to the ground, Khan whipped the katana around and silenced the scream permanently.

"Khan!" Otto shouted. "More come from the north!"

"Deal with them," Khan growled. "Anthea is my priority."

"_Ja_, Kaiser!" Otto saluted and gestured to several of the men, who followed him towards the reinforcements.

Khan looked around at all the ramshackle huts, grouped in clusters amidst rocks and trees. It was, he noted with an annoyed sigh, going to be aggravating having to search them all for his wife and son.

* * *

The problem with being confined to a hut with a toddler was that firstly, the toddler got bored, and secondly, he wasn't _completely_ potty trained. He managed well enough, but he was also only seventeen months old, very nearly eighteen-Anthea wasn't sure how long she'd been here, or what day it was, so it could have easily passed the six-month mark-and accidents happened.

Such had been the case that morning. Anthea had had to bathe Nolan as a result and wash his clothes. Her son hadn't appreciated that one bit, crying hysterically when she doused him with the icy water. But his clothes were _mostly_ dry now, so she struggled to get him dressed again.

He wasn't having any of it, grouchy and irritable, pushing at her with his little hands when she tried to put his shirt on him. "No!"

"Nolan!" Anthea let out a frustrated sigh. "I am _not_ letting you run around naked around Klingons."

Not that Nolan understood that. She tossed his shirt down on the pallet and sat, pulling at her hair. At least she'd got his pants on him.

Where was Khan? Surely he'd come searching for her. But . . . it _was_ a large galaxy, and she didn't know if the Klingons had, say, left a ransom note. She'd been a bit unconscious at the time.

She could only hope and pray that he came soon. And when he did, she knew that the destruction he'd level on the Klingons would make what he'd done to Starfleet look like a child's prank.

"Please, Nolan, let's put your shirt on," she said with a sigh. She felt tears well in her eyes; she was tired of everything, and Nolan's grumpiness was more than she could take right then.

When he realised he was making his mother cry, Nolan cuddled up to her leg. "Mama!" He grabbed the shirt and held it up. "No get dwessed!"

Anthea made a very small amused sound and pulled him into her lap. He relented and let her put the shirt on him, even holding his little arms in the air for the sleeves.

She was pulling the second sleeve into place, his little hand not through the wrist hem yet, when he suddenly twisted, eyes going big.

"Dada?" he chirped. "Dada come?"

"Soon, baby," she murmured.

Anthea got his hand pulled through the sleeve and his shirt tugged into place over his small belly. He giggled when she tickled him lightly.

Then he rolled out of her lap and dashed for the door, patting it with his small hands. When Anthea scooped him up, she realised there was a lot of commotion going on outside. There were shouts in Klingon, and the sounds of phaser fire. The cavalry, she guessed, had arrived.

She looked at her son and said, "I think you're right, Nolan. Daddy's here."

Quickly, she crossed the small room and set him on the pallet. "Stay right here, sweetheart," she whispered. "Don't move."

There was a loud scream outside, and Nolan's chin trembled. "Mama? Mama!"

"It's alright, baby. Mummy's just going to the door. Remember, don't move!"

For once, Nolan obeyed completely. He sat down, pressing his hands to his face, over his eyes. Anthea crept over to the door. It wasn't locked, because it was guarded, and where was she to go? She inched it open, seeing that her guards were still there, but their focus was directed towards the battle. Neither paid her any attention.

The door was now open enough for her to get an arm out. She crouched, noting the one on the left wore a blade on his right calf. Anthea gingerly reached out and drew it out of its sheath. When enough of it was clear, she wrapped her fingers around the handle, yanked upwards, flipping it in her grip as she did.

She drove the blade up, between the guard's legs, driving it into the space where thigh met groin. The blade was big and curved, and it severed the femoral artery. Blood gushed over her hand, making her grip on the knife slippery.

The Klingon fell with a groan, and the guard on the right turned. Anthea lashed out as he did, catching him across the back of the knee and severing his hamstring, or whatever the equivalent tendon was in a Klingon. She jumped to her feet and he stumbled against the door, shoving it open as Anthea backpedaled.

She narrowly missed the fist he swung at her head. Throwing herself back into the hut, she braced for him to charge her.

He roared and came after her, as expected.

Two steps in, he went "Urk!", stiffened, and fell face-first to the dirt. There was an identical knife to the one she held embedded in the back of his skull.

Anthea looked up from the very dead Klingon to see Khan standing in the doorway. He was covered in blood spatter, a katana in one hand, the phaser rifle at his side.

She let go of the bloody dagger. It hit the ground with a faint thud.

"You're late," she said, and burst into tears.

* * *

Khan dropped the katana and launched himself across the space between them, gathering Anthea into his arms. Ignoring their mutually gore-covered state, he kissed her with everything in him. All other concerns were utterly eclipsed by the bone-deep need to hold her.

She clung tightly to him, holding him as close as she could. Then she wrenched away, gasping, "Nolan!"

"Of course." Khan slipped by her to retrieve their son, who was frightened beyond belief and crying at the top of his lungs.

The toddler reached for Anthea. "Mama! Mama!"

Khan passed him over and she took her little boy, heedless of the blood covering her, hugging him as tight as she dared. Still, her eyes were only for Khan as he picked up Sulu's katana.

"See, baby?" she said to Nolan. "I told you Daddy would come get us."

Khan took her by the elbow, flashing a brief smirk. "Hurry. Let's beam up to the ship and get you into the medbay."

"You brought the _Reliance_?" she asked, though she knew it was a stupid question.

"No."

"Then what did you bring to-"

"I brought the _Enterprise_," her husband said, as Kirk appeared.

The relief on the younger man's face was immense. "Good, you found them. C'mon. Scotty can't get a lock on anyone in this area. Too much iron in the cliffs, he says."

Anthea followed, murmuring soothing things to Nolan as they nearly ran, to find an open area to beam up from. Her hand was in Khan's, their fingers laced together. He kept looking back, as if checking that she was really there.

There were no words for how she felt right then. He really had come for them, just as she'd known he would. And, going from the sheer number of dead Klingons, he'd been just as angry as she'd believed he'd be.

"Khan!" Otto was suddenly there. "Some have escaped. Should we hunt them?"

"Yes. You know how to fly the ship. The coordinates are plotted. All you need do once you're free of the atmosphere is set the computer to autopilot, as I showed you."

Otto nodded. "Yes. We will meet you back home."

Kirk pulled out his communicator. "Scotty, we got her! Can you beam up two at once?"

"You mean the kid, too?" Scotty's voice responded. "Och, that's easy . . . But not three."

Reluctantly, Khan let go of his wife's hand.

"Okay, Mr. Scott, beam us up!" Kirk ordered.

The white light of the transporter surrounded them. Nolan wailed in fright and buried his face against Anthea's shoulder.

When the light faded, they were gone. Otto shook his head at the wonder of it and turned his attention to hunting the remaining Klingons.


	23. Chapter Twenty-Two

**-Chapter Twenty-Two-**

Anthea hadn't used a transporter since her Academy days, and she wasn't fond of the sensation. Too much like ants crawling under and on her skin. After his initial fright, Nolan didn't seem too bothered by it, and Khan, naturally, barely noticed. Of course, her husband developed a portable transwarp beaming device and used it to jump from Earth to Qo'noS, so she wasn't the least surprised. He'd had to have tested it many times.

Kirk stepped off the platform first, pulling out his communicator. "Bones, we're on board. I'm sending Khan and his wife to you." To his "visitors", he said, "I need to get to the bridge, but I'll come down to Medbay in a few minutes to see how you're doing."

Anthea could only nod.

* * *

At the medbay, Anthea was offered something to change into, to get the grime-and-blood-caked clothes off, and so McCoy could examine her injuries. Nolan began screaming the moment the nurse took Nolan from her, so Khan held him, trying to soothe his son. The nurse resorted to fetching the tribble and handing it to the distraught little boy. Nolan wrapped his small arms around it, hugging the purring creature tight. Gradually, Nolan's cries turned to whimpers, then sniffles, and he nodded off in Khan's arms. As soon as he was out, Khan extracted the tribble from his arms and handed it back to the nurse.

It was a little awkward to stand in the nude before the doctor as he scanned her. Fortunately, it was only cursory. He scanned her head, then the bruises on her arms. When he found the scars, he raised an eyebrow.

"Section 31 initiation," she told him quietly. "One of the reasons I had little problem with it getting blown up, or with Marcus dying."

Anthea looked to Khan, and he gave her a faint smile.

She dressed in some borrowed scrubs and sat for the rest of the exam. Then she took Nolan from Khan so that McCoy could examine the toddler.

"You'll want to keep from hittin' your head anytime soon," McCoy told Anthea. "Or doing anything too stressful. You've had a pretty bad concussion, and you've got some bruising of your left temporal lobe that concerns me. Unfortunately, I can't really _fix_ that here. It _should_ go away on its own, eventually."

She reached up and touched the yellow, green, and purple lump on her forehead. "If I do hit my head?"

"Brain injuries are hard to predict. Some of the facilities back on Earth have the equipment to heal it right up for you, but we don't have one on board. You need to watch for dizziness, nausea- yeah, I know, you're pregnant and have that anyway, but I'm talkin' really bad and sudden. You need to rest as much as possible. You could have microscopic injuries that aren't showin' up on the scan, and they could get worse. Aneurysms and subdural hematomas can develop if you aren't careful, 'cause you could tear all sorts of stuff in there if you do somethin' wrong."

Khan reached out, brushing his fingers over the bump on his wife's head. "If that _does_ happen, what do we do?"

McCoy shrugged. "Drill a hole in her head an' drain it? You got a medical android, right? It should be equipped with the procedure, if Yves doesn't know how."

Khan narrowed his eyes at the doctor. "I am _not_ drilling a hole in my wife's head."

"Look, Khan. For all the advanced medical treatments we got? The brain's still the one thing we can't completely fix with lasers and scanners."

Khan rested his hand on Anthea's shoulder, near where Nolan's head rested, and nodded in resignation.

"But other than that?" she asked. "Am I alright?"

"Yeah, you got some scrapes and bruises, and I think you sprained your wrist a little, but it seems to be on the mend already."

"And the baby?"

McCoy smiled. "Your little one is just fine. You're eleven weeks pregnant, accordin' to my computer. You'll be due, oh, around the same time Nolan here was born. The fetus doesn't show any signs of anything wrong from your ordeal, but I suspect a good lotta that's due to Dad here."

Khan gave McCoy a tight nod. "Speaking of my son?"

"Same thing, bumps and scrapes, but he's recovering faster."

"Naturally."

"Do . . ." Anthea licked her lips. "Do we- Can we tell what it is yet?"

McCoy shrugged. "If we did some invasive testing, we could check DNA, but that runs the risk of causing a miscarriage. I'd recommend waiting a few more weeks, until you're sixteen weeks or so, and have Yves do an ultrasound."

"Alright." Anthea kissed the top of Nolan's head, then looked at her husband. "I want a bath and to sleep."

"You can go," the doctor said. "Nurse Abrams will escort you back to your quarters."

"I believe we'll be fine on our own," Khan told him. "I know the way."

Anthea slid off the bed, Nolan still clutched to her chest, and pressed tight against his side. He wrapped an arm around her and guided her out of the medbay and down one level to the quarters he'd been assigned but had barely used.

It was designed for two single crew members, with beds on opposite sides of the room. Khan dragged one of the beds over to join the other, then led Anthea to it.

She sniffled, trying to hold it together, but her control was slipping. Khan saw it clearly, and he took Nolan from her, the exhausted child giving no sign he was aware of anything going on around him as he slept. Placing Nolan nearest the wall, he motioned for Anthea to join him on the bed.

She crawled up, into her husband's arms, and then she broke, sobbing with her face pressed against his chest. Silently, Khan held her, his fingers stroking her hair, until her tears subsided.

"Don't leave me," she whispered.

"I won't. I promise."

"Bad things happen when you leave me."

"Never again," he promised. He kissed the top of her head. "Never, ever again. Even if God himself were to come and ask it of me, I will *not* leave you again."

Anthea raised her head, looked at him with red-rimmed grey eyes. "Tell me you killed them."

"Every last one."

"Good. I know it's bloodthirsty of me, but . . . I was so scared, Khan. I knew you'd come for us, but I didn't know what they wanted, or if . . . you'd find us in time."

"I was terrified that I would not find you," he admitted in a whisper. "Or that I would be too late, and I would lose you and Nolan. Finding you gone, when I got home . . . That was the worst feeling I have experienced in my life, Thea."

"I fought," she said. "I tried, but I couldn't get away."

"I saw the Klingon," he told her. "That was an excellently placed thrust."

"Hard to miss with a target that big."

He sat up. "Let's get you and Nolan that bath. You're both filthy."

Anthea wrinkled her nose. "And a bit ripe. Thanks for not pointing that out, by the way."

Khan snorted a laugh. "Come. I'll start the water for you."

* * *

Anthea sat on the floor of the shower stall, Nolan in her lap, and gently washed the days of grime from his skin. He had bruises from where the Klingons had held him too tightly, and from when he'd fallen. Khan could take almost any beating, but her little boy was only half his blood, and he was still so young.

She kissed the bruise on his shoulder and felt tears prick her eyes. Sniffling, she gathered him close, kissing the top of his small head.

"I'm so sorry they hurt you, baby," she murmured. "Mummy didn't do a very good job of protecting you, did she?"

Khan, sitting outside the stall, made an impatient sound. "You did better than you think," he told her. "After all, you're both still alive, and there's two less of them, at your hands."

"I know. But I should have . . . I don't know, found a way to keep their hands off him."

"At what cost?" Khan shifted to sit on his haunches, head tipped as he studied her. "You protected him, first and foremost. If you had gone on the offense, they would have killed you and taken him, and then he would have been truly alone and defenseless."

"I know, I know! I can't help feeling like this, though."

Nolan reached up and patted her face. "Mama."

She took his little hand and kissed his palm. "Mummy's just a little sad, No. It's alright."

Once she had the toddler cleaned up, Khan carted him back into the bedroom and put him down to sleep. When he returned to the bathroom, he found her with her face pressed to her knees, crying.

He stripped off his dirty clothes and stepped into the shower, bending to lift her from the floor. "Anthea."

"I don't know why I'm crying!" she told him brokenly, her tears mixing with the water.

"Because you've been through a trauma, and you're pregnant," he pointed out. "I'd be surprised if you _weren't_ crying."

Khan turned her so that the water ran over her hair. With an astonishing amount of patience, he combed his fingers through the dark tangles, working all the knots out with a gentle touch. Then he massaged shampoo through the strands, doing what she, at that moment, could not.

"I'm not an invalid," she whispered.

"Hush. Let me do this." He pushed her wet hair aside and dropped a kiss on her shoulder. "I vowed to take care of you, remember? In sickness and in health?"

Khan helped her rinse the soap from her hair, turning his attention to the rest of her. Seeing the scrapes and bruises, the livid mottling across her face where Rodriguez had hit her, made his blood boil anew. He forced it back, kissing her temple the way she'd kissed Nolan's hurts.

"He's dead," he told her.

"Who?"

"Rodriguez."

She took a moment to process that. She hadn't even considered him, with everything else going on. "Did . . . the Klingons kill him?"

"No." Khan ran the wash cloth over her collar bone. "I did."

"You? But-"

"He hurt you and he betrayed us. He knew what I would do, and he did it anyway." Khan tipped her head up, running the pad of his thumb over her lips. "Did I want to? No. But he gave me no choice."

"I hate to say it, but I'm glad he's dead. I don't care that he hit _me_, but he let the Klingons take _Nolan_, and for that-"

"Oh, he deserved to die, no doubt. Hush, now."

Putting himself between her and the water, Khan backed her against the wall, tipping her head back to kiss her. He slanted his mouth over hers.

"Mmm," she murmured against his lips.

He cupped the back of her head through the wet tangle of her hair, kissing her hungrily. She sighed into his mouth, her tongue finding his.

Anthea flattened her hands on his upper abdomen, fingers curling against his muscles as desire flared to life. After so long afraid and in the dark, she needed his touch on her skin to assure her that she was safe.

She pulled back a little. "Khan," she began.

He heard the tremour in her voice. "Shh. I know, my love. Let me . . . let me do this."

Later, she sagged weakly against him, her face against his shoulder. "Maybe," she mumbled against his shoulder, "that wasn't the best idea. But I needed it so badly."

He trailed his fingers down her spine. "I thought it was an excellent idea."

She lifted her head, wincing as she did. "But now I've a headache."

Instantly concerned, Khan cupped her face in his hands. "How bad is it?"

"Not bad, just a little achey. I think I need sleep."

He kissed her forehead. "I'm sorry, I sometimes forget you don't recover the way we do. Of course you need sleep."

They left the shower and he helped her dry off. They dressed in the clothes they'd been given-the others long-sinced burned as hazardous waste due to all the blood-and he carried her to bed.


	24. Chapter Twenty-Three

**-Chapter Twenty-Three-**

Anthea moaned a little in her sleep, curling in on herself. Khan gathered her close, her back to his chest, and brushed his lips against her hair.

"Hush, darling," he whispered. "You're safe."

A seemingly endless number of times during his servitude to Marcus, the stress and fear had given him nightmares. He'd lost count of them during that hellish year, but Anthea had comforted him so many nights those last few months, soothing him with a soft word and a touch, calming the storms of his mind.

It was his turn to drive away hers, and he held her tight, murmuring words of reassurance; though she didn't wake, not fully, Anthea relaxed slowly, melting into him, and her pulse ceased to race.

He slid his hand lower, resting it on the small bump of her abdomen, where their child grew. There were no words for how relieved and grateful he was to have all of them safe again.

She wasn't far enough along for either of them to feel the baby move. It pained him that he had missed the first one, when she carried Nolan. Until Anthea, children had never been on his radar much. Now, he longed to feel the life within her, to feel it kick, and to be there for his child's birth. To know she had suffered that without him was always a blow right to his solar plexus.

Nolan woke and wiggled until he sat up. He rubbed sleepy eyes with his little hands. When he looked up and saw Khan, he cried, "Dada!"

"Shh," Khan murmured. He shifted so he could lift Nolan over Anthea's still-sleeping form. She was so exhausted, nothing bothered her. She was still breathing, something he found himself unconsciously checking for. "Let's not wake Mummy."

It reminded him of the night of their reunion, just five months before, when Nolan had woken in the middle of the night and demanded his attention.

Nolan patted his chest, then plunked his head against Khan's shoulder.

"Dwagons, Dada," Nolan told him, in a serious whisper. "Bad dwagons!"

"Dragons?"

His son nodded, looking up at him with wide blue eyes. He hadn't lost the chubby face yet, but when Khan rubbed his thumb over Nolan's cheek, he could feel the underlying structure, and knew that his son would be the spitting image of him one day.

Khan assumed that "dragons" meant "Klingons". It was an apt description, and must have come from Anthea.

"Thank you for looking after Mummy," Khan murmured. "You are a brave boy."

"Dada come," Nolan said firmly. "Mama say!"

"I will always come for you. I promise."

The child sighed and nuzzled against him. "Dada make dwagons go 'way?"

"Always, my boy. Always."

* * *

Khan left early, before Anthea woke, to speak to Kirk about something. When she rose, she noted that she still had a bit of a headache, but she suspected that was to be a problem for a while.

She fed Nolan from the replicator, amused that it was programmed for tater tots and chicken nuggets. Not a proper breakfast food, she knew, but he needed more than the slop the Klingons had fed them for a week and a half.

She had just worked the tangles out of her hair with a borrowed hairbrush when the door buzzed. She crossed the room on bare feet to answer it. Anthea wasn't surprised to see Leonard McCoy there. What surprised her was the tribble.

"Oh. Hello," she said.

"Good morning. I didn't want to call you all the way down to Medbay, so I figured I make a house call, see you you're doin'."

She stepped back to let him in. "I'm alright, I suppose. I've a nagging headache, though."

"Not unexpected with a head injury, but a little troublesome since you didn't have one yesterday. Are you experiencing anything else? Nausea, fatigue- I just realised how stupid that is to ask a pregnant woman."

Anthea laughed. "Nothing out of the ordinary. I haven't had any nausea this morning, but that should be reaching its end, shouldn't it?"

"Theoretically," the doctor said. "I've known women who've had morning sickness beyond giving birth, 'til about six weeks after."

She pulled a face at the thought. "Oh. I hope that doesn't happen to me."

"Did it last time?"

"No, I only had occasional bouts 'til about sixteen, seventeen weeks. I was a little queasy the few days before I had Nolan, though."

Of course, that had been right after discovering that her beloved and missing husband, John Harrison, was really Khan Noonien Singh and enemy of Starfleet.

"I'd expect about the same this time around. You mind if I check you out a little, though, see how your vitals are and all that?"

"Go right ahead." She eyed the tribble. "You'll probably need to put that down, though. What is it for?"

McCoy cleared his throat. "Uh. I was thinking . . . I don't really have much of a use for the little furball here, and Nolan really seemed to like it, so . . ."

He held out the purring ball of fur.

"Are you giving us the tribble?" Anthea asked, as she took it.

"Kid could use a pet, right? Might . . . help with . . . everything." The doctor looked awkwardly at the primitive animal. "Kids sometimes need pets to get them through when they get scared."

Anthea smiled. "How old is your child?"

He shouldn't have been surprised, really, that she knew. "Uh. She's twelve. Her name's Joanna."

"And how long has it been since you've seen her?"

McCoy sighed. "Too damn long. Uh . . . three years? My ex-wife's got custody."

Nolan padded over, hands held out for the tribble. "Mine?" he asked.

Anthea laughed. "He's in the 'everything is mine' phase," she told McCoy. To her son, she said, "But, yes, this is yours. It's a gift from Doctor McCoy."

The tribble was nearly as big as her son, but when Anthea passed it down to him, he held on fiercely, chubby hands buried in its fur. The animal didn't complain, just made a little trilling sound and went back to purring.

"What do we say, Nolan?" she asked.

"Mine!"

McCoy laughed. Anthea rolled her eyes.

"No, sweetheart, we say 'thank you'."

Nolan blinked up at her with big blue eyes, brows scrunched in confusion. "Why?"

McCoy covered his mouth with his hand. "Yeah, there's no doubt that's Khan's kid."

"Mine!" Nolan laughed. "Mine mine!"

"Thank you," his mother said. "I'll have to have the gratitude lesson when he's not ecstatic about purring fur. He's a hardy little boy and not much fazes him, but I still . . . worry."

Nolan sat on the floor, the tribble in his lap, and patted it somewhat randomly. "Mama? Name?"

"We'll think of a name, sweetheart."

The door slid open and Khan stepped in. His gaze flicked from McCoy, to Anthea, then to Nolan with the tribble. The tribble he distinctly remembered giving back to the nurse the previous evening.

". . . Please tell me you've surrendered possession of that to my son," he said to McCoy. "Otherwise, we'll have to deal with an inordinate amount of screaming."

McCoy snorted. "Nah. I gave it to the little guy. They eat grains, mostly, fruits and vegetables. It's been neutered, so you won't be overrun with tribbles."

Khan watching as Nolan snuggled the ball of fur. "They're also useful as a warning system."

"Yeah."

The two men exchanged a look, one Anthea didn't catch.

McCoy pulled his tricorder out of his doctor's bag. "I'm just doing a check-up. We're almost back to your planet. It's a lot faster once you know where you're going, isn't it? I want to see how you're doing, give you instructions for further treatment if needed."

Anthea sat on the bed, and McCoy scanned her, with Khan hovering a little anxiously behind. He informed them that everything seemed the same as before, but her blood pressure was elevate a little.

"Try to get that back down," he told her, as he fished something out of his bag. McCoy handed her some pain relievers. "Only take these if absolutely necessary. They aren't harmful to babies anymore, I just don't want you getting too many of 'em in your system and missing anything if it should go wrong."

"Thank you, Doctor. About the blood pressure, how do I lower that?"

"Relax, mostly." He pointed a finger at Khan. "No lifting, no carrying. Right now, I don't even want her carrying the kid. Max you can lift is, say, ten pounds. Take it easy, and I'm serious about this. Besides, you shouldn't have to exert yourself, with Superman here to do everything for you."

Anthea giggled at that image. "Yes, Doctor. Thank you."

He gave her a list of instructions, and took his leave. Khan shook his head and gently pressed his lips to the bump on her head.

"He thinks he's so clever," he muttered.

She laughed, turning to wrap her arms around him. "Quit being such a grouch. We're almost home!"


	25. Chapter Twenty-Four

**-Chapter Twenty-Four-**

Kirk met them in the shuttle bay. "You _sure_ you want to go back?" he asked Anthea, one last time, though he already knew the answer.

She looked at Khan, and all the love she had for her husband was bare on her face. "Yes, Kirk. I appreciate the concern, but with Khan is where I need to be."

Khan stood in the doorway of the shuttle, Nolan at his hip, and he smiled at her. It made Kirk a little jealous, seeing how much they clearly loved each other.

"You may not agree with the things he's done," Anthea told the captain softly, "but . . . someday, I hope you are able to find what Khan and I have. He's not just my husband, Kirk, he's my lover, and the father of my children. He's my protector and my confidante, and the best friend I've ever had."

"Yeah," Kirk said, and he smiled wryly. "I had to try, right?"

He looked to Khan and said, "You take care of her this time."

"Do not worry, Captain. I will not let anything in this universe harm her again."

Anthea turned and boarded the shuttle. Kirk and Khan stared at each other for along, silent moment, and then the dark-haired man stepped back, into the shuttle, and hit the door control.

Kirk stood there, in the shuttle bay, and watched as the small vessel left. They had all made their choices, even if he wasn't sure they were the right ones, and the only thing left to do now was to live with them.

* * *

Even before the _Enterprise_'s shuttle set down, Kati was running across the clearing towards them. When the ramp lowered and Anthea stepped out, the tribble in her arms, her sister-in-law nearly tackled her, hugging her fiercely.

"You are all right!" Kati effused. "I was so very worried!"

"I'm alright, yes," Anthea said warmly, hugging her friend. "Tired, sore, headachey, but alright."

Khan followed her out of the shuttle, Nolan in his arms. When the toddler saw his aunt, he yelped, "Titi!"

"Nolan!" Kati let go of Anthea and plucked her nephew out of Khan's grasp. She showered the laughing toddler's face with kisses.

A Bird of Prey shot by overhead. Anthea flinched and ducked.

Khan immediately pulled her close. "Don't worry, my dear. It's only Otto. We confiscated one of the Klingon ships."

"Oh." She let out a held breath. "I just . . ."

He kissed her temple. "I know, my love. I know."

She sighed, leaning against him. Anthea looked around their little village, the roots of their new home, which she'd thought at times she'd never see again. "This makes me happy. Even after what Rodriguez did. I feel safe here."

"Good. I do not want you to fear our people."

Otto came jogging over from where he'd landed the Klingon ship, looking very pleased. "We arrive safe, Kaiser, as you may see. We have been on the ground for an hour only. I very much like the ship, but it needs a new paint job."

One corner of Khan's mouth lifted. "We'll find you some paint. What are you going to call it?"

"Hmm." Otto thought for a moment. "I will need to consider this."

Khan clapped him on the shoulder. "Make it a good one. If you will excuse me, I need to get Anthea inside and resting."

Kati followed them into the Reliance, Nolan clinging to her like a barnacle. "What is this furry thing you have?" she asked Anthea.

"Nolan's pet tribble." Anthea set it on the floor of her son's room. It didn't move, just sat there and chirped.

"What is a tribble?"

"I've no bloody idea," Anthea sighed, "but McCoy gave it to Nolan, and he adores it."

Kati set Nolan down, and he immediately picked up the tribble, chattering away in nonsense toddler-speak to his new best friend.

Khan stood in the doorway. "Come, my dear, you need rest."

"Yes," Kati agreed, looking intently at Anthea, taking in the dark smudges under her eyes, the mottled bruising across her face, the scrape on her chin. "You look awful. I think, though, it is better than you were before?"

"Much," Anthea agreed. "And yes, I'd like to sleep in _my_ bed now."

Khan took her hand and let her to their quarters. He helped her change into her sleep clothes, ignoring her protests that she could do it herself, and assisted her into bed.

He kissed her forehead, then her mouth. "I must go see to the supplies Kirk is sending down."

"Mmkay."

Khan drew the blanket over her, and turned the light out as he left.

* * *

When Anthea woke, she was tucked into bed, Khan beside her, Nolan snuggled between them. Their son was asleep, but Khan was awake, reading something on his PADD.

"Oh," she said, after a moment. "I almost thought I was imagining being home."

Her husband immediately shut off his PADD and set it aside. He rolled to face her, shifting Nolan out of the way so he could draw her closer. Khan reached to touch her face, following the curve of her cheek with one finger.

"No," he murmured. "You are home and safe."

She sighed, catching his hand in hers. "I knew you'd come for me. I know I've said that before, but . . . it was what kept me going, knowing you were on your way."

"Always," he whispered. "As important to me as our people are, Thea, you and our children are _part_ of me."

He threaded his fingers through her hair. "Tomorrow, I will finish our new home and set up our bed.

"I'd like that," she whispered. "I miss our bed. Nice, big, roomy bed."

He smiled a little, gaze fixing on her lips. "Yes. I would like to spend tomorrow night in it . . . without small children present."

Anthea smirked. "They do tend to get in the way, don't they?"

She hugged Nolan's small body to her, warm and soft and smelling of baby still. He stirred in his sleep, his fist closing on a handful of her nightshirt. He jammed a thumb in his mouth and wiggled to wedge himself between his parents, all without waking.

Khan smoothed his son's hair with a gentle touch, and reached for the bedside light. "Go back to sleep," he said.

Anthea caught his hand in the dark, lacing their fingers together, happy to fall asleep with her little family safe and together.

* * *

True to his word, Khan spent the morning cleaning the construction debris out of their cabin, removing the saw dust that still caked the floors, and putting the finishing touches up. While they were gone, someone-probably Kati-had scrubbed the Klingon blood off the stone floor. The cabin wasn't ready for winter yet, but they had some time to prepare, and they weren't sure how cold it would get in the first place.

Anthea wasn't allowed to help. She sat outside, in the shade, with plenty of water, reclining on a blanket. Nolan stuck close to his mother, having been sufficiently frightened by their ordeal to not go wandering off, at least for a while.

Kati sat beside her on the blanket, her adopted son in her lap. She had officially claimed the infant now, and lavished attention on him.

"What are you going to name him?" Anthea asked.

"I do not know yet. I . . . have been wondering if Yves might have any suggestions."

"Are you two . . . _together_ now?"

Kati flushed. "Not yet."

Anthea rolled her eyes. "Kati. _Tell_ him how you feel. Don't waste time. You never know how much time you have."

Her sister-in-law looked contemplative. "True. I will think on this."

Khan came out of the cabin, looking sweaty, hair in his face, his shirt hiked up a little on one side to expose an inch or so of skin. Anthea thought he looked delicious, and could hardly wait 'til he had their bed set up.

"I believe," he said, "that, decor aside, our new home is ready. I'm going to take a lunch break, then finish putting the bed together. I've got Nolan's crib moved into his room."

"Oh, good!" Anthea was very pleased to hear this news.

Nolan toddled up to Khan, holding a hand out, something clutched in his fist. "Dada!"

Khan crouched. "What is it, my boy?"

"He has something he wants to give you," Anthea told her husband. "Probably a rock."

Holding out his own hand, Khan waited for Nolan to unclench his fingers and drop the small object in his hand. It was, indeed, a pebble. Shiny and reddish-orange, it sparkled in the sunlight from crystalline structures inside.

"Thank you," he said to his son. "This is a very nice gift."

Nolan beamed.

Turning to Anthea, Khan asked, "What am I supposed to do with this?"

She shrugged. "Keep it 'til he loses interest and wanders away? That's what I do with most of the things he brings me. He never brings me shiny rocks, though. It's usually bugs."

Her husband chuckled and slipped the pebble into his pocket. Nolan scampered off to his aunt, to check out the baby resting in her arms.

"He is resilient," Khan remarked to his wife.

"He is," she agreed. "He's such a happy little boy."

Khan stood, and pulled Anthea to her feet, wanting to hold her. He didn't care who saw anymore. She was his wife, and he would embrace her in public if he damn well wanted to.

She leaned her head against his chest, taking comfort in the steady thump of his heart under her ear. During her captivity, she'd feared she would never have his arms around her again. Standing here, outside their new home, made her very happy.


	26. Chapter Twenty-Five

_Where did my readers go? I swear you were here a few chapters ago . . ._

* * *

**-Chapter Twenty-Five-**

After they'd eaten lunch, having a picnic in the shade, Khan dragged the parts of their bed from Earth out of the _Reliance_'s hold, where they'd been sitting for nearly six months, and hauled them into the cabin. He put it all back together, and even put sheets on the mattress.

When he came back out to join her in the shade, Anthea reflected that life was good here. Headache aside, she was content with how things progressed in their settlement.

That was, until she glanced over, towards the village square, and saw Marla McGivers flirting with one of Khan's men. Barton, she thought it was.

Anthea stiffened. "What is _she_ doing here?" she demanded.

Khan followed her gaze. "Oh, the McGivers woman? She came down with the supplies from the Enterprise that Kirk gave us. She's decided she would rather be here with twentieth-century men than out in space with twenty-third century ones. As we've something of an imbalance of men to women, I thought this was an . . . imperfect solution. Is there a problem?"

His wife narrowed her eyes. "I went to school with her. I can't _stand_ her. She's one of those women who will flirt with anything that moves, and takes her personality from her flavour of the week boyfriend."

"I'd noticed she's . . . forward," Khan said dryly.

Anthea's grey eyes lifted to his face. "Did she put the moves on you?"

"She _tried_," he told her with a small chuckle. "I tried to dissuade her from coming here, but-"

His beloved wife growled. "How _dare_ she!"

"Thea, calm down. Nothing happened."

"Still. It's the principle of the thing! I'm going to go lay down a few rules."

Khan laughed out loud. "Thea!"

She ignored him and stomped across the clearing to the redhead. "You!"

Marla turned, pretty features brightening. "Anthea Mackintosh! What are _you_ doing here?"

"Anthea Harrison, not Mackintosh. Actually, technically, it's Singh. Khan is my husband."

All of the colour drained out of Marla's face. "Oh. I . . . didn't realise."

Everyone had stopped to see what Anthea was so angry about, so it was dead silent in the village when the crack rang out, of Anthea's palm across Marla's face.

"You try anything with my husband again," Anthea hissed, "and I will _kill_ you. And it won't be pleasant. You understand me?"

Marla nodded rapidly, her hand pressed to her red and stinging cheek. "Perfectly," she whispered.

"Good. I'll tolerate your being here because we need more women, but if you so much as put a toe out of line . . ."

The redhead looked down at the ground.

Anthea turned and stalked back to Khan. As she passed, Otto made a big show of bowing, saying, "Kaiserin!"

Khan leaned against the tree where she'd left him, looking vastly amused. "Feel better now?" he asked.

"Somewhat." Anthea reached up and rubbed her forehead. "Headache's back, though."

He snaked an arm around her neck and kissed the top of her head. "McCoy told you to take it easy and keep your blood pressure down," he reminded her.

"I know, I know."

"I believe someone needs assurance of my affections," he murmured.

She grinned when he curved a hand around her waist. "Mmm. Maybe I _do_."

"Should we go see if the bed is . . . put together correctly?" Khan asked her. In full view of everyone, he pushed her hair out of the way and kissed the side of her neck.

"That would be good. I-" Suddenly, she went absolutely white. "Oh."

Anthea's knees buckled, her eyes rolling into her head. Surprised by this, Khan barely caught her as she slumped to the ground. As he lifted her limp form into his arms, he shouted to his sister, "Kati! Watch Nolan!"

With his wife in his arms, Khan sprinted for the Reliance.

Yves wasn't in the medbay when Khan came in, Anthea unconscious in his arms. The doctor had been outside for once, and he had seen Anthea's collapse. He was close on his leader's heels, though.

"What happened?" he asked, as Khan put Anthea on the closest bed.

"Doctor McCoy warned her not to get overly stressed," Khan fretted. "He said it could cause bleeding. She slapped the McGivers woman, yelled at her. Then she just . . . dropped."

Yves pulled out a light and checked Anthea's pupils. One was larger than the other, and sluggish to respond to the light. Muttering under his breath, he fetched his tricorder and scanned her. "I do not like her vitals. I need to check . . ."

The doctor fetched the brain scanning equipment they'd used on Kati and attached it to Anthea. The area above the bed lit up with a display of Anthea's brain, in three dimensions, and her vitals appeared on the wall-mounted monitor.

Yves frowned. "_Merde_," he murmured. "It is not good."

"What isn't?"

The Frenchman poked a finger into the neural monitor's display, where a dark patch marred the surface of Anthea's brain. "She has a hemorrhage here, see? I cannot stop it, Khan, I do not have the tools or the training."

"What do we _do_?" Khan demanded.

The vitals monitor started screaming, interrupting before Yves could tell his leader there was nothing _to_ be done. Anthea's heartrate began to drop, blood pressure bottoming out.

Yves grabbed the defibrillator and shoved Khan out of the way. He ripped Anthea's shirt open, pressed the paddles against her skin, and pressed the controls that sent a jolt through her. Her pulse jumped, then flattened again.

The good thing about her heart stopping was that she was no longer bleeding into the space between her brain and her skull. The bad thing was that it was, in fact, stopped.

Khan felt his heart drop into his toes. He was helpless to do anything.

"Get me adrenaline!" Yves snapped.

Khan rushed to the refrigerator near Yves's desk and dug through the medicines until he found the one he sought. Across the medbay, the doctor gave Anthea yet another jolt. Returning to where Anthea lay, he opened the hypo and jammed the needle straight between her ribs, through the top of her left breast, and into her heart.

"Clear," Yves said.

Khan stepped back, and Yves shocked her again.

This time, her pulse caught and held, though it was thready. The equipment monitoring her brain beeped again, letting them know that the hemorrhage had resumed, if slower.

"My blood," Khan said. "We can-"

"No time," Yves snapped. "We have no concentrated platelets left, Khan. The only thing we have is-"

The doctor's face went completely blank, and he spun on one foot, diving across the small medbay to the refrigerated storage Khan had just raided. The blonde man yanked the door open, rifled through its contents, and came up with an injector.

Khan recognised its contents instantly. "Yves, that could kill the child."

Yves shook his head. "Maybe. But the child _will_ die with her if _she_ does, non?"

A split second was all he could spare. Khan looked from Yves to his wife. His friend was right; Anthea was hemorrhaging inside her head, just as McCoy had warned them about, and if they didn't do something _now_, she was going to die.

He climbed up onto the bed, dragging her into his lap. To Yves, he nodded and said, "Do it."

Yves took a deep breath, psyching himself up for it, and pressed the injector of serum to Anthea's jugular.

At first, there was no change. The serum had been developed for Kati, not for Anthea, and they had no idea how she would react to it, if at all.

One second ticked by. Two. Five. Ten.

Thirty seconds after the injector drained into Anthea's vein, she began to seize, just as Kati had. Khan wrapped his arms tight around his wife, burying his face in her hair. It wasn't how one was supposed to handle a seizure, but if Anthea didn't survive this, he wanted- he _needed_ to be holding her when it happened.

"Please, my darling," he whispered. He gathered her close, pressing his lips to her temple. "I do not _beg_ for anything, my Thea. But- Please. Do not leave me."

Yves split his attention between the readouts and his patient. Seeing Khan so vulnerable was a completely new experience, and he wasn't sure how to respond. So he made himself busy, fetching a new extractor. Silently, he held it up.

Khan caught a glimpse of it, nodded and held out his arm a little. Yves drew what he could, immediately turning to inject the fresh blood into Anthea's shaking arm.

The doctor sighed. "And now, we wait."

Khan didn't respond, just sat and rocked back and forth on the bed, holding the dying love of his life in his arms.


	27. Chapter Twenty-Six

_A/N: Last one for this 'fic. I've got a few other pieces in the works, and if you aren't aware, you should check my profile for a few one-shot companion pieces!_

* * *

**-Chapter Twenty-Six-**

Yves was torn, wanting to keep an eye on Anthea, but also wanting to tell Kati what was going on, and to give Khan some privacy if . . . this didn't work. There was nothing he could do to save Anthea now, not if the serum and Khan's platelets didn't do what they hoped. The bleeding in her brain was too significant.

He stepped out of the Reliance, finding the entire settlement waiting in tense silence outside. It took the Frenchman back a bit.

"Yves." Kati stepped up with a perturbed Nolan in her arms. "How is she?"

He cleared his throat. He didn't need to speak loudly, as everyone there-save the annoying human woman Anthea had slapped earlier-had enhanced hearing. "She is bleeding in her brain. I do not have the tools to treat it, save . . . for Khan's blood. We have done what we can, but all we do now is wait and see."

Kati clapped a hand over her mouth, tears welling in her eyes. Without thinking, Yves hauled her into his arms. Nolan squawked a protest at being squished so.

Otto came over. "May I go in?" he asked the doctor.

Yves nodded.

Khan's lieutenant entered the ship, walking with a heavy heart towards the medbay. There, he let himself in.

His fearless leader sat on the first of the two beds, hunched over the prone and convulsing body of his wife. Khan rhythmically stroked his fingers through Anthea's hair, and tears ran unheeded down the man's face.

It was a shock to Otto; he had never seen Khan so undone. "Kaiser," he said quietly, reluctant to intrude.

Khan's eyes were red when he looked up. "Yes, Otto?" His voice was quiet and rough.

"Everyone waits outside," the big man said awkwardly. "We wish to know . . . Is there nothing we can do?"

Khan rested his cheek on the top of Anthea's head. "I wish that there were, Otto, I really do. We gave her the rest of the serum developed for Kati, and some of my blood."

"And we wait to see if it works, _ja_?"

"Yes. I do not know for how long."

And then, for the first time in his adult life, Khan Noonien Singh broke down in ragged sobs.

* * *

An hour after they administered the serum, the convulsions stopped. Anthea's vitals hovered at a critical low, but were, for the time being, stable. Yves put her on oxygen, because her lung function kept hitching.

Khan hovered nervously, completely at a loss for what to do. He wasn't used to being helpless like this. He was Khan, ruler of the world, a superhuman who could do anything and always knew what to do and when.

Except when it came to this. Here, in this room, watching a machine breathe for his wife, he felt incredibly small and weak. He needed _something_ to do, but he had no idea what. There wasn't anything he could do but wait, and he didn't want to leave, in case . . . Just in case.

Since Yves's quarters were just across the corridor, the doctor left him alone with Anthea, and Kati watched Nolan for Khan. He sat by himself, in a chair beside Anthea's bed, holding her limp and unresponsive hand in his.

She was in a coma, partially induced by Yves so that Khan's blood could do its work. Yves had brought out the medical android and had drained the hematoma. A bandage covered Anthea's forehead now, and a pint of Khan's blood dripped through an IV, the second one they'd given her since Yves had performed the surgery.

Khan didn't know if she could hear him, but he still spoke to her anyway.

"You know . . . when you came into my life, my dearest, I was not expecting it. I was angry, and afraid, because Marcus had woken me from my sleep, and told me that he held my people captive. He said that he knew who I was, and if I did not cooperate, he would kill them. He and his men tortured me for over a week before I agreed."

He pressed his lips to the cool, velvety skin on the back of her hand. "My servitude began the day Marcus brought me to the Kelvin archive. I had been threatened and hurt, and had nothing to live for save my people's continued safety.

"And then I saw you. I couldn't believe someone as beautiful as you worked for such horrible people. You were a bright spot in my incredibly dark world, and I felt drawn to you like a moth to a flame. I knew I shouldn't draw you in, and I did it anyway, because I was unable to resist you."

Khan rose to sit on the side of the bed, turning her arm in his to run his fingers the length of her forearm, over the hidden scars. "I didn't ask what they'd done to you, because I knew already. And because they had done that, and you still managed to be so strong and warm, when I was feeling so weak and cold, I knew I could have no other woman than you, my Anthea. And I knew you wanted me. It was so clear to me. You gave me a safe haven against the worst Marcus could put me through. You loved me even when I couldn't tell you the truth, loving me even through everything I had to do to free our people."

He brushed his fingers over the bandage on her head. "I tried to reach you from Qo'noS, but I couldn't get through. I believe Marcus blocked our communicators from reaching each other, after I tried to kill him in San Francisco. I did not know if you still lived. He threatened to kill you, my love, and for that alone, he deserved to die. Because you are _mine_, Anthea. You are the thing I need most in this world. Waking up to your face, when you brought me out of my second cryosleep . . . I know you think I was cold, and distant, but I had gone into it thinking all I love was dead and I had nothing left. To see you alive, to know _you_ had saved _me_ . . ."

There was no response in her, no change in the slow and steady beep of the heart monitor. He sighed.

"I have no words for how much I need you," he whispered. "I love you beyond all reason, and you ground me. You keep the monster they created at bay. If I lose you . . . What will I become?"

* * *

Anthea was comatose for four days. Khan didn't leave the medbay, save for seeing to his needs when absolutely necessary, and to take care of Nolan. The little boy didn't understand what was going on, and he cried continuously for his mother. Khan held him and walked the main corridor of the _Reliance_ in the middle of the night, trying to soothe his son. Finding himself effectively a single father was rather a surprise, and one that made him appreciate everything Anthea had done while he had been imprisoned.

Feeding a grouchy toddler, giving the child a bath when he didn't want one, getting Nolan dressed when he wanted to run naked and free . . . Khan didn't know how Anthea managed, and made it look so effortless.

Towards evening on the fourth day, Anthea's vitals changed drastically, the computer helpfully alerting Khan and Yves with a trill. They'd been low but stable, and now they jumped, her heart rate increasing to normal, her respiration rising, oxygen saturation levels shooting from where they'd hovered at ninety percent to nearly a hundred.

"What's happening?" Kati asked, looking between brother and doctor.

"She's waking up," Khan said, and his voice cracked with emotion. He looked to Yves for confirmation, and his friend nodded.

It took a good hour for her to surface, but eventually, her eyes slowly fluttered open. Khan made sure that his face was the first she saw, and he tenderly caressed her cheek as she blinked up at him.

"Welcome back," he rasped.

She licked dry lips, tried to speak but couldn't.

"Water, please, Kati," Khan said to his sister. With Anthea's hand in his, he didn't want to budge.

Anthea turned her head a little, taking in the medbay. When she managed to speak, her voice was barely audible. "-happened?"

Khan helped her sit up a little, handed her the glass of water Kati brought, and helped her hold steady as she took a few sips. "You collapsed," he told her softly. "After you confronted the McGivers woman, you just . . . one moment you were speaking to me, and the next, you just dropped like a stone."

"Apparently, you got angry enough to cause a subarachnoid hemorrhage," Yves told her. He scanned her with the medical tricorder, then manually checked her eyes. "Doctor McCoy warned you about that, _non_?"

Anthea put a hand to her head, but the bump was gone. "How long was I . . .?"

"Dead?" Khan asked roughly. "Technically, two minutes."

Her grey eyes widened in surprise. "I _died_?" she croaked.

"Only technically," Yves said helpfully.

Khan shot him a look. "Your blood pressure dropped, likely from shock due to the hemorrhage. We managed to get your heart started again, and Yves . . . We couldn't do anything about the bleeding. So we improvised."

Anthea looked from Khan to Yves and back. "What did you _do_?"

Khan wasn't a hesitant man by any means. Uncertainty was as unfamiliar to him as the surface of Vulcan. But now, he glanced away and cleared his throat.

"There was only one thing we _could_ do," Yves said. "We gave you the serum we gave Kati. And while that did its work, Khan gave you his blood. We had none, and the serum helped while we extracted enough of his blood to replace what you lost."

"Oh. But . . . why is that bad?" She really didn't understand. Khan's blood healed.

"We had to give you some to keep you alive and stop the bleeding," Khan told her. "And once the bleeding stopped, Yves . . . had to drain what had collected around your brain."

Pressing the glass into her husband's hands, Anthea reached up and felt her skull frantically. "I don't feel anything," she said.

"We gave you two more transfusions," he responded. "And there was an . . . unintended side effect."

"_What_ side effect?" she demanded, not noticing that she had her full voice back and was sitting up on her own. "Is the baby okay?"

"The baby, it is fine," Yves assured her, even as he and Khan exchanged a look. Khan nodded, and the doctor went to fetch something. He came back with a spare metal part Anthea recognised as a piece of one of the dismantled cryotubes.

"Bend that," her husband said, taking it from Yves to hand to her.

"Pardon?"

"Bend it," Khan repeated.

Anthea looked at the metal in her hand. Four inches long and half an inch thick, it was a fairly substantial chunk. "You've got to be kidding me," she said, taking it in both hands. "There's no way I can-"

As she spoke, she put pressure on each half, pushing the ends towards the middle. To her absolute shock, the metal gave. Not much, only a few degrees at most, but still.

She dropped the metal and it bounced off her leg to fall to the floor. "I . . . What just happened?"

"That," her husband said dryly, "is the side effect. Giving the serum to Kati cured her neurological disease. Giving it to _you_, after you've spent so long with my DNA, Nolan's DNA, in your system through two pregnancies . . . Acted as something of a catalyst, it seems."

"What did you _do_?!"

"It seems, my dearest Thea, you're one of us now."

_-to be continued?-_


	28. The Space Between Preview

For all my readers, keep your eyes open!

* * *

Khan put himself between his family and the door, pressing Anthea and Nolan into the corner. Across the room, Yves did similar for Kati and Pandu. Marla crouched low, behind a stack of boxes where she'd taken refuge.

"What _are_ they?" Anthea breathed.

"I do not know," her husband admitted. "But they have Barton. I killed one, but I couldn't reach him. Now hush."

They were well-hidden in the shadows, but that didn't stop Anthea's heart from skipping a beat when the mechanised figure stopped in the doorway, scanning with its optical sensor.

Please go away, she prayed, holding Nolan tighter. Please, please don't find us.

* * *

_Anthea Harrison was saved from death by her husband's blood, but it has changed something within her, and not necessarily for the better. As she struggles to adjust to-and survive-the transition, Khan Noonien Singh fights to provide for his people in a primitive environment amongst dwindling supplies, and winter is setting in. When they embark on what should be just a routine supply run, they learn that when it comes to change, sometimes resistance is futile..._


End file.
